Posted on 03/29/2007 10:54:25 AM PDT by The_Victor
BERKELEY (MarketWatch) -- The hype over the unreleased iPhone has actually increased over the past month despite the fact that nobody has seen or used the device. This, if nothing else, proves the power of branding and especially the power of brand loyalty.
It's the loyalists who keep promoting this device as if it is going to be anything other than another phone in a crowded market. And it's exactly the crowded-market aspect of this that analysts seem to be ignoring.
Apple Inc.'s past successes have been in markets that were emerging or moribund. Its biggest hit has been the iPod. But let's examine what happened here.
First the MP3 player business was segmented and unfocused with numerous players making a lot of cheap junk and not doing much to market any of it.
Apple does what? Advertise. Gosh, what a concept.
It advertises on TV, on billboards and on the Internet. Within no time the company takes over the business that would probably still be languishing without Apple.
Thus Apple does what it does best. It produces a jazzy product and promotes it like any good business should do. And in the process manages to get a high margin.
This is nothing more than the fundamentals.
(Excerpt) Read more at marketwatch.com ...
According to the article, marketing.
Must be a liberal. Wants Apple to just Surrender. Why compete?
That can come in handy if you're drunk........
User interface.
Apple won't market this to the corporate market
Or really annoying if your friend sends you a sideways picture.
David Pogue has used one from what I understand. Maybe Dvorak, who's been wrong about Apple with astonishing consistency for decades, should consider he probably just didn't get one because he's not a very good or influential columnist.
Even the most expensive Palm is ~1/2 the cost of the iPhone.
Just have them send you pictures when they're drunk........
If they don't try to get it into the corporate market they'll miss a ton of revenue. Almost everyone I know that has an all-in-one device got it from their employer.
Can their margins really be that low? I understand that the iPhone is supposed to cost $500. That's over double what I paid for my Windows Mobile device almost a year ago, and as far as I can tell mine does everything the iPhone is supposed to do. More, if you count the fact that Windows Mobile is compatible with all the Office/Outlook business apps and has hundreds of third party mobile apps available.
If they're not making one heck of a margin on that, they're doing something wrong.
http://cache.gizmodo.com/gadgets/images/iProduct.gif
"I'm not sure what you mean by recently."
I was really being gracious. It's been more than a while, and I agree, he *has* been wrong on some big issues.
The margins are pretty low, and with good reason, there's stiff competition. Nothing brings down prices like multiple competing companies, very few possible feature differences and limited overall UI possibility. On tech devices there are really only 3 points of competition: features, ease of use, and price. The way the all-in-one/ uber-cellphone market has shaken out there's almost no competition in features (every device can do pretty much everything, with a few notable exceptions), all the UIs are kind of clunky so there's not much competition there, that leaves price. Apple's habit of sleak interfaces could mean they open up a new avenue of competition, but given how high they're pricing the iPhone I don't think they can win on that alone.
From what I've heard, it runs OSX and can easily do everything your device can do and then some.
If it's more expensive than blackberry and palm, and in turn gives you a hipper design and ability to play mp3 and videos, then it's clearly not marketed to corporate.
I'll give Apple the benefit of the doubt that they're attuned to their consumer market and know how to introduce and sell product to them.
If you liked that, you'll love this
http://www.theonion.com/content/news/apple_unveils_new_product
Can someone please just put wi-fi in a mobile phone, that works as as seemless as the wi-fi as the local cafe? if iPhone does it I'm signing up
How much is the iPhone going to cost? The Treo retails for something like $650. The iPhone is $1300?
Verizon has it in some markets, but not others. It just depends on what sort of upgrading the carrier has done in the market--but in Indianapolis, for instance, I can plug my Treo into my laptop and use the Treo as a modem and I don't notice much difference in connection speed than I would with, say, a cable modem.
In cities that haven't been upgraded, though, I've noticed that the Internet is quite slow.
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