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How Apple Orchestrates Controlled Leaks, and Why
Lanxon writes "'I was a Senior Marketing Manager at Apple and I was instructed to do some controlled leaks,' confesses John Martellaro. Monday's article at the Wall Street Journal, which provided confirmation of an Apple tablet device, had all the earmarks of a controlled leak. Here's how Apple does it. Often Apple has a need to let information out, unofficially. The company has been doing that for years, and it helps preserve Apple's consistent, official reputation for never talking about unreleased products. The way it works is that a senior exec will come in and say, 'We need to release this specific information. John, do you have a trusted friend at a major outlet? If so, call him/her and have a conversation. Idly mention this information and suggest that if it were published, that would be nice. No e-mails!'"
Ethics (n): The 'optional' set of rules companies occasionally engage when it is a benefit to the company but publically declaire they use at all times.
-=[ Who Is John Galt? ]=-
As long as leaks and product releases are timed with trading blackout periods (usually tied with quarterly earnings reports), there shouldn't be a problem since an insider wouldn't be allowed to buy or sell stock in the first place.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
There's talk of Microsoft slate tablet kicking about now too : http://www.neowin.net/news/live/10/01/06/microsoft-set-to-unveil-slate-tablet-pc-at-ces
Except that they shut Think Secret down, remember?
Insider trades are in the public domain. Yahoo stocks has a nice list. According to them, the last trade by an insider was December 2nd, 2009. I wouldn't know how these things go down, but my guess is that's too early to be able to easily pin as illegal behavior without some direct evidence. Also, I'd guess that a lot of the big shots are in it for the long haul and aren't interested in gaming their own stock (I could surely be wrong if the iSlate turns out to be a dud and there's a whole bunch of insider trades before the 27th). I would hope that the SEC would look pretty hard at the trades of reporters who report on stocks in addition to the insiders though.
Gentlemen! You can't fight in here, this is the war room!
Sure, it's good business sense to get consumer/reviewer reaction before investing all the money required to develop a product. But again, this has been standard practice among corporations and politicians for a while.
And we are increasing the publicity by discussing this.
I think you missed the point.
The Apple guy doesn't leak to the media, the Apple guy consults with a partner. The partner leaks to the media. The partner will likely have a special non-disclosure agreement that will cover his ass in the event that all goes south. It's all well orchestrated, undocumented, and not illegal.
Those were listed as possible reasons for the tablet leaks. The article was written by a former Apple employee, so he knows how these things commonly work, but he doesn't know specifics in this case—it could be just one of those reasons, or several.
The iPhone was announced on January 9, 2007. It went on sale on June 29, 2007.
And on the day it was announced, Steve apologized for this unusual early disclosure and explained why they did it. Of course you remember, don't you? After all, you could remember the date (I couldn't).
Assorted stuff I do sometimes: Lemuria.org
They actually said in that case that they were announcing early because they had to file papers with the FCC, which would essentially make the product public knowledge anyway.
The other time that they frequently announce products ahead of release is OS upgrades, but that's usually done around the time they're starting to release developer builds of the OS.
In general, Grandparent is right. In the case of the iPhone, they had to announce early or let the FCC do the announcing for them, because the FCC publishes data about the various phones they approve.
But most of the time, a new product is available for purchase within a week, if not a day, of the announcement.
Apple was lame at the time. But there was a company called NeXT which put out some very clever designs, and we know what came of that. Catch my drift?
Had to do with the application for an FCC clearance, after which all kinds of things were going to become public anyway.