What would you do if you knew you were loosing $4.5million?

wireless.itworld.com - Cash isn’t king: Apple limits iPhone purchases

That’s what Apple are allegedly loosing in unlocked iPhones. I don’t see Apple getting much sympathy for this but it makes for an interesting predicament. On the one hand they have obligations to their marketing partners - AT & T are seeing a quarter of a million accounts less than they are expecting to see and cannot be happy about that.

On the other hand, the Apple brand is all but built on consumer perception and sentiment. A large section of their most loyal following are self-professed ‘geeks’ who’d rather die than think of themselves as mainstream conformists. (I’ve always found this pnenomena around Apple rather ironic, given that the Apple design philosophy basically boils down to following the commonest denominator, be it in style )

It’s all about that old notion of being part of ‘the’ revolution, but most of these revolutionaries are armchair revolutionaries - they are paying top dollar to be on the same side as the real revolutionaries. They want to be friends with the guys who actually hack stuff. And this market segment, crammed as it is with technophiles, opinionmakers and product evangelists are the guys that Apple is squaring up to headbutt by only selling iPhones by credit or debit card.

The article doesn’t say what, if any steps will be taken against obvious breakers of the iPhone software and or the terms and conditions, beyond limiting sales to two units per individual.

My guess is not much. Would be interesting if they did though.

From a philosophical perspective the itworld article’s title says more than the entire article; No, cash isn’t king any more, at least not in our marketplace, here accountability is everything.

+1 for tracking.

André SC

2 Responses to “Limiting (i.e. Tracking) iPhone purchases”

1. stanchee Says:
   October 30th, 2007 at 10:14 am

   Hey Andre,
   Got your email re: Peapod Review.
   Man, what a surprise! I won a hundred bucks for that little review?
   It’s exciting. Thank you so much.
   It’s been too quiet for a long time. Give it life and make it work!
   The sales alert system, perhaps, need a closer look. It’s pretty confusing at the
   moment—you see, last 2 days I’d 3 email alerts for new sales but each email
   didn’t even have any content and I couldn’t trace anything from the back office
   about those new sales (email said “Pending”).
   Hope to see some improvement there in the near future. Time is almost due
   for me to write a complete “Blogkits Review” according to my plan—I want to
   work on it for 3 months (or a bit longer) to provide a more accurate assessment
   ( I started on Aug 07 ).
   Hope to see more lively Blogkits ( how about a referral program? ).

   Cheers and be well.

   Stan

2. admin Says:
   November 5th, 2007 at 5:25 am

   Hi Stan

   We are taking a look at the alerts system right now, expect some improvements Ciao

   A

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