I am excited to see Apple thinking about the little guy. This is the first year I have seen them offer more and more cheap and relevant offers in order to reach a subset of the population that is growing with this current downturn.
They have offered:
1 – A lower cost macbook and macbook pro.
2 – They are offering refurbished mac mini’s at a price point below MS machines (See Microcenter.com $399 for a dual core with current OS and current iLife).
3 – The older version of the iPhone with new OS at $99!!!!
4 – An upgrade for the new Snow Leopard at $29!!!! Instead of over a hundred like their prior releases and like Mr. Softy’s.
5 – A Server Operating System with unlimited users!!!!
6 – And free stuff. They are giving away more and more.
In a time when everyone is cutting back, this is the way to go. Rather than the way of the Softy, which is to create more robust OS’s and put higher price tags with less support for old peripherals, causing people to WASTE MORE! What are you thinking Microsoft????? Not to mention the utter contempt MS is showing for Netbooks by offering a version of their newest OS that can only run three or programs concurrently! THAT IS DUMB! Go ahead, shoot your non-cloud computing toe!
Way to go Apple!
pd
(Writer currently is long in Apple, Intel and Mr. Softy…)
Analyst: Old iPhone, not new, will drive Apple’s sales – Apple 2.0
Those 1 million iPhone GSs sold last weekend represent a “remarkable achievement,” writes RBC Capital’s Mike Abramsky in a note to clients issued early Tuesday, especially considering the new iPhone’s relatively narrow international distribution (8 countries vs. 21 last year).
But according to Abramsky, it’s the old iPhone 3G — newly priced at $99 — not the new 3GS, that will drive global sales this fiscal year.
“While early buyers appeared to favor the iPhone S,” he writes, “the $99 iPhone is expected to drive 30-40% momentum improvement, in countries like UK, Germany, France, and other parts of Europe and Asia where phones are more highly subsidized (on contract) and prepaid is popular (e.g. ~60% prepay in UK, ~90% in emerging markets like India).”
Abramsky expects Apple to sell 20 million iPhones in fiscal 2009, 64.5% of them the older 3G models. By his estimates the new 3GS won’t dominate sales until fiscal 2010, when he expects Apple to sell 30 million iPhones, roughly 60% of them 3GSs. See chart and spreadsheet below.
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