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Crazy Stevie's iPhone Prices are Insaaane!

Posted by Zonk on from the come-on-down dept.

theodp writes "Slate takes a look at the alarming lesson of the iPhone price cut and ponders the long-term effects of a Fire-Sale Nation mentality, especially when companies go all Crazy Eddie slashing prices on products like homes and cars that have active secondary markets. 'High-profile price-chopping tends to occur whenever companies freak out about the vicious combination of a slowing consumer economy and the prospect of getting stuck with big inventories of unsold goods. The tactic often works in the short term. The hype over insanely low prices functions as a form of free advertising, and the lower prices tend to attract buyers. Apple announced on Sept. 10 that it had sold its 1 millionth iPhone.'"

6 of 357 comments (clear)

  1. As long as the only connectivity is AT and T... by fyngyrz · · Score: 5, Informative

    It won't matter to me what his prices are. An incredibly short-sighted error, IMHO. I'm good for five of them (three kids and my SO.) But no connectivity, no buy.

    --
    I've fallen off your lawn, and I can't get up.
    1. Re:As long as the only connectivity is AT and T... by dubbreak · · Score: 3, Informative

      By focusing solely on GSM, they're locking themselves out of most of the US cell phone market - over 120 million customers.

      Oh come on, you have to admit that is hyperbole. Yes, they may have somewhat limited themselves in the US market by being limited to a few carriers but I'm sure they did the research and the amount of lost sales because of that didn't out weigh the world market (the majority of the world uses GSM, the US is strangely skewed towards cdma).

      Most cell phone manufacturers do make different versions for different countries.. Motorola makes both GSM and CDMA versions of the RAZR and many other models, as do Sanyo, Samsung, RIM, and Palm.

      I was once told by someone in the industry never to buy a CDMA version of a phone that was originally designed as a GSM phone. The reasoning being that often the other version was an afterthought and not as thoroughly tested.

      Maybe at this point Apple is testing the market (worldwide) and will eventually approach the much smaller CDMA market if it seems financially viable. You can't really fault them for going for the bigger pot of fish first.
      --
      "If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
    2. Re:As long as the only connectivity is AT and T... by blind+biker · · Score: 5, Informative

      Well, I used to work at Nokia (I guess you've heard of them) and specifically in phone testing. In short, your post is BS from beginning to end; Nokia would make sure their phone worked with every damn operator. Whether it will be then locked in in the USA it didn't matter, because we knew it wouldn't be locked in in Europe and half of the rest of the world. And we were painfully aware of the fact that in every single country of the world we were competing, almost toe to toe, with the likes of Motorola, Samsung and Ericsson (later SonyEricsson).

      Yeah, testing takes time, but it's cost in time and money is nowhere so high that we'd simply NOT test and go exclusive with one (or $SMALLNUM) operator.

      Whether AT&T was the logical choice or not, I don't know, but it certainly wasn't for the reasons you cite!

      I can't believe the mods went for it, though?!

      --
      "The agriculture ministry is not in charge of Gundam" - Japanese ministry official.
  2. Don't forget by 2.7182 · · Score: 3, Informative

    Crazy Eddie ended up in jail.

  3. Deflation by michaelmalak · · Score: 4, Informative
    Is it too much to ask to name the phenomenon rather than describe it?

    And margin-shredding behavior tends to spawn more margin-shredding behavior
    That's called deflation. Deflation is 100x worse the inflation because during deflation the economy stops: nobody's working, nobody's buying, nobody's selling, and everybody's hoarding what little they can -- i.e., a Great Depression.
  4. Re:Gimme A Break!!! by UbuntuDupe · · Score: 3, Informative

    Now you're just being silly. No one wants to ban the PS3 on the grounds that it's being sold "too cheaply" to inflate sales. That's ridiculous. The reason that informed, serious activists want the PS3 banned is because it uses too much energy for the benefit it provides, just like incandescent lights.

    Don't try to trivialize the solid case for banning PS3s by associating it with the cranks who want to ban PS3s for being too cheap.

    (Unfortunately, I have to remind people this is sarcastic...)

    --
    Apology to Ubuntu forum.