As we officially put this in the rear view mirror I have three parting shots:
1. Traditional media outlets got duped. The wild west of the blogosphere had a few isolated reports of iPhone 4 antenna issues and then Consumer Reports released a suspect report that was contrary to majority experience and big media everywhere jumped on board. False perception overtook reality. Kudos to Steve Jobs for putting the small minority in its place.
2. The iPhone 4 might sell 20 million units in a single quarter. “Antennagate” will not hinder sales at all.
3. The free bumper promotion will be inconsequential to Apple’s bottom line.
Schwarz writes, “The bottom line is that sentiment is important for investors to gauge in the short run but in the long run it all comes back to fundamentals.”
Full article here.
What I’m going to enjoy is that nice fat class action lawsuit RIM just bought itself. Wont take long for a lawyer to find a Blackberry user that has signal loss issues that the RIM CEO just implied his phones don’t have. (probably wont have to leave the office).
Note I said implied because if you read his statement he NEVER says Blackberry’s don’t do the the exact same thing. But boy can he tap dance around an issue.
radio:
You are full of shit
I was not keen on all the “Love our customers” fluff, but Jobs knows what he is doing and how many times he needs to repeat something for the message to get across. I think the message was quite clear that they want everyone to be happy and will give you your money back if you are not. Seems fair to me.
I doubt if there will be many returns because people will get the bumper, get improved signal, and get on with their tiny worthless lives.
Might have been better if Apple had just offered folks a $30 credit to use towards a bumper or other case — but this works for me.
Fredo — I bought the “condom” as you put it not because of reception issues but because I have smaller hands and the sharper (less rounded) edges of the iPhone 4 were hurting my hands. There are a lot of people with that same problem — for me, how the phone looks is less important than how it works, and for what I do in a standard day, it’s the best phone ever.
I think Steve Jobs did fine, but he was doing damage control and seemed to be repeating too much that “We love our customers.” He tried hard, and it showed. The content was persuasive.
Consumer Reports is getting trashed in their own forums.
In any case, sales will be boosted by the free case and the return policy.