“Buy a Mac computer at your nearest Apple Store and receive a free 8GB iPod Touch! Just bring the acceptance letter, and you get to participate in one of the better ‘Back to School’ campaigns in recent memory,” Kaminsky reports. “My ‘Call-to-Action’ is to recall what this past Tuesday’s guest, Evercore’s Michael Price, said about Apple: The more hardware they get in people’s hands, the more apps they will buy.”
Kaminsky reports, “What a genius marketing move. Apple is essentially giving away the razor to sell the more expensive razor blades.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Great theory, except that’s it’s wrong. Apple makes the vast bulk of their profits on hardware, not iOS apps, which are free or low-priced on average (and Apple only gets 30%, the developers get 70% of the revenue). Most of Apple’s profits are rolled back into iTunes Store operating costs. The “Back to School” campaign (which is nothing new, by the way) is a way to sell more Macs (which don’t (yet) run iOS apps, by the way) to students and teachers by dangling a free iPod touch. It’s not “essentially giving away the razor to sell the more expensive razor blades.” Apple’s “Back to School” promos have usually been genius marketing moves, but not for the reason Kaminshy cites.