Price Drops For Mac mini Upgrades

RustNeverSleeps writes "Apple has just lowered prices on certain build-to-order options on the Mac mini. The combination Bluetooth and AirPort Express option has gone down to $99 from $129, 1 GB RAM upgrades have been reduced to $325 from $475 and the price of an upgrade from a 40 GB hard drive to an 80 GB hard drive has been reduced to $50 from $90. Also, the original 4x SuperDrive has been upgraded to an 8x drive for the same price. Interesting that they dropped prices so soon after release. Perhaps Apple actually listened to people complaining about overpriced upgrades."

Comments

Classic TV Shopping technique..

[OlivierB]

1. Start by announcing something cheaper than competition or usual
2. Stress out benefits of given product so potential buyers actually think it's good value.
3. Let early buyers get in.
4. For those still undecided, actually improve the deal (i.e more features, ie. superdrive) and/or cut the price
5. Those actually undecided that thought it was already good value now think this is fantastic value.
6. Sell like crazy

I think this technique is call "push-over" or something like that. The key to it is to convince people that even at a premium your product is fantastical value (Apple sure knows a lot ib this field). The more you convince people at step 2, the easier the push-over.
IMHO, APPLE had it all laid out. They knew they could make the fat margins with early adopters and then have the extra publicity announcing this. It keeps the momentum...

How do you know the margin is thin?

[SuperKendall]

An eMac is $800 with a 17" CRT built in.

A Mac mini has no monitor, or keyboard or mouse and only costs $500 for roughly the same hardware. The pacakging is also a lot smaller and simpler.

Apple could still be making decent margins off this I think. And as others have noted if there are many accessory sales margins are even better.