O petróleo está em queda, mas a incerteza continua em alta

[atomez]

iPhone Price Cut: 10 Reasons Why Apple Did It

Yesterday's iPhone price cut -- from $599 to $399, 68 days after product launch -- came sooner and was deeper than anyone expected. Why did Steve Jobs do it?

"We want to make iPhone even more affordable for even more people," was the reason he gave. "We want to put iPhones in a lot of stockings this holiday season."

But is that the whole story? Apple (AAPL) watchers have been pondering the question overnight and have come up with at least 10 other possibilities. Cutting and pasting from various websites, we offer them here:

1. Sales are slowing, and a price drop will re-invigorate them.
2. Other smartphones are entering the market and a $399 price tag kicks those where it hurts.
3. iPhone is a classic platinum turkey -- a high-end phone that sells a million units rapidly but then quickly loses momentum.
4. The new iPod touch was likely to undermine iPhone sales.
5. Apple early adopters would have paid any price. $600 was just short term profit maximization for the launch.
6. Apple has reached a milestone that can justify a price cut. Development costs have been recouped. (It'll be a lot cheaper to produce the next million iPhones than the first, so Apple hasn't given away its margin.)
7. iPod Touch and iPhone share certain parts, thus bringing manufacturing costs down for both products.
8. Apple promised AT&T the price cut if they could offer the iPod touch this holiday season.
9. If Apple learned anything from the Mac war with Wintel, it was that maintaining hardware margins at the expense of marketshare was a mistake.
10. Clearing out inventory to make way for a 3G iPhone ASAP.

[atomez]

Apple Offers $100 Credit, Apology to IPhone Buyers

É uma boa acção, mas mau para as acções...

Sept. 6 (Bloomberg) -- Apple Inc. Chief Executive Officer Steve Jobs apologized to customers who paid full price for the iPhone before he cut the cost by $200 yesterday.

In an open letter on the company's Web site, Jobs said users who bought the phone before the discount and got no other rebate will receive $100 in credit at Apple's retail or online stores.

``Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust,'' Jobs wrote today. ``We apologize for disappointing some of you, and we are doing our best to live up to your high expectations of Apple.''

The rebate and price cut raised concern that demand may have stalled, hurting Jobs's effort to sell 10 million iPhones in 2008 and take on Research In Motion Ltd. and Motorola Inc. Cupertino, California-based Apple plans to sell its millionth iPhone by the end of this month. The iPhone, a combined iPod media player and mobile handset, went on sale June 29 for as much as $600.

Apple shares fell $1.75, or 1.3 percent, to $135.01 at 4 p.m. New York time in Nasdaq Stock Market trading after a 5.1 percent slump yesterday. The stock has gained 59 percent in 2007.

``It remains to be seen if the store credit will heal all wounds,'' said Toni Sacconaghi, an analyst with Sanford C. Bernstein & Co. in New York. ``It certainly acknowledges that the decision to lower the price so quickly had a significant negative impact on sentiment among its customers.''

Go for It

The company will give details of its store-credit plan next week, Jobs said. He said yesterday Apple will sell the 8-gigabyte iPhone for $399 to spur sales in the holiday period, which accounted for 30 percent of fiscal 2006 sales.

``We have the chance to `go for it' this holiday season,'' Jobs said in the six-paragraph letter.

Apple will phase out the lower-end, 4-gigabyte version of the iPhone because customers prefer the model with more storage. The iPhone, only available in the U.S. with a two-year AT&T Inc. service contract, is slated to come out in Europe this year and Asia by 2008.

The 33 percent price reduction shows Apple is having trouble convincing customers to switch to the iPhone, said Global Equities Research analyst Trip Chowdhry.

The store credits will cost Apple about $60 million in revenue, based on about 600,000 iPhone owners, he said. That would subtract about 2 cents from profit, he said.

``Apple's iPhone is suffering from significant strategic and tactical missteps,'' said the analyst, lowering his rating on the computer maker's stock to ``equal weight.''

Right Decision

Jobs, 52, said he received hundreds of e-mails from customers who were angry that the company cut prices two months after the product's introduction. He read each one, he said.

This is the second time Jobs apologized to Apple supporters in the past year. In October, he apologized to shareholders after acknowledging that he knew some stock-option grants to employees were backdated to inflate their value.

``I am sure that we are making the correct decision,'' Jobs wrote. ``It benefits both Apple and every iPhone user to get as many new customers as possible in the iPhone `tent.' We strongly believe the $399 price will help us do just that this holiday season.''

The holidays and the back-to-school shopping period are Apple's two biggest sales quarters. Jobs announced the price cut the same day he unveiled new iPods, including one with the same 3.5-inch touch screen and Wi-Fi support built into the iPhone.

``I was a little pissed off they cut the price two months after I bought it,'' said Mike Guirguis, who stood in line in Arlington, Virginia, to buy the iPhone when it debuted. ``One hundred dollars makes me feel a little better -- not $200 better, just $100 better. It's a store credit, not cash.''

So Soon

The rebate may also be a tactic to boost sales, said David Garrity, director of research at Dinosaur Securities Inc. The credit won't cover the price of many Apple products. It's enough for a $79 iPod Shuffle, accessories such as cases, and iTunes gift cards.

``It will likely stimulate the sale of more products, since what can be bought from Apple for under $100?'' said Garrity, who is based in New York.

Some early iPhone buyers said they knew the technology would get cheaper over time, echoing Jobs's remarks that it is the nature of the industry. Ioan Crisan, who bought two on June 29, said the $100 credit proves Apple was trying to care for users.

``I knew that eventually it was going to happen, but nobody would've probably predicted it would be this soon,'' said Crisan, 35, an engineer in Vero Beach, Florida.

[tiopatinhas]

Ao olharmos para o gráfico da Apple dá vertigens

[Fogueiro]

A seguir virá a Apple TV (as TVs não terão cabos de ligação e a capacidade de gravação incorporada será enorme).

Já estão também a entrar no negócio dos conteúdos.

O regresso do Steve Jobs ainda está a ser mais espectacular do que se esperava!
...

[atomez]

O que é certo é que em 3 anos a APPLE subiu 700% ... enquanto que a "estrela da companhia" GOOGLE se ficou por "apenas" 400%...

[tmnol]

Iphone como nos outros países deve ficar bloqueado a uma rede... alguém sabe qual vai ser?

Rais parta a Apple com tantas restrições. Também ou têm a sorte de meter o tlm na minha rede, ou então perdem os meus 500 euros.

Não estou certo de que possa fazer publicidade a outros Sítios, se estiver a cometer algum erro peço desculpa.

Contudo se for a este sítio vai esclarecer muitas das suas dúvidas...

http://www.iphoneportugal.com/index.php ... mitstart=0

Tiago

[atomez]

A Apple não pára de surpreender!

Hoje mesmo deverá anunciar novos iPods, incluindo um Nano mais curto e mais largo que já tem a alcunha de "Danny De Vito dos iPods" ...




E mais surpreendente é esta - a Apple desenhou o interface de utilizador do novo Jaguar XF!




E há rumores que está tb a trabalhar com a VW num ... iCar !

[afonsinho]

Iphone como nos outros países deve ficar bloqueado a uma rede... alguém sabe qual vai ser?

Rais parta a Apple com tantas restrições. Também ou têm a sorte de meter o tlm na minha rede, ou então perdem os meus 500 euros.

[Keyser Soze]

IPhone outsells smartphones in July
Tue Sep 4, 2007 9:53AM EDT

FRANKFURT (Reuters) - Apple Inc's iPhone outsold all smartphones in the United States in July, its first full month on sale, accounting for 1.8 percent of all U.S. mobile handset sales, research group iSuppli said on Tuesday.

ISuppli reiterated its forecast that Apple would sell 4.5 million iPhones this year, rising to more than 30 million in 2011.

The two models of the iPhone on the market sold more than Research in Motion's Blackberry series, the entire Palm portfolio and any individual smartphone model from Motorola, Nokia or Samsung.

Sales equaled those of LG Electronics' Chocolate, the most popular feature phone on the U.S. market, iSuppli said.

ISuppli classifies the iPhone as a crossover phone that competes with both smartphones, which have personal computer-like functions such as e-mail, and feature phones, which have extras such as cameras and music players.

"While iSuppli has not collected historical information on this topic, it's likely that the speed of the iPhone's rise to competitive dominance in its segment is unprecedented in the history of the mobile-handset market," iSuppli said.

"Apple achieved this in the face of numerous, well-entrenched competitors."

Most buyers of iPhones in the United States in July were male, under 35 and had a college degree, iSuppli said.

A quarter of those who bought an iPhone switched to operator AT&T, which has an exclusive service agreement for the iPhone in the United States.

The iPhone will go on sale in Europe later this year.

ISuppli gathered its data through a consumer survey of 2 million participants in the United States that it carries out online once a month.