Apple's Secret Weapon To Influence Industry Pricing 407
Hugh Pickens writes "Nick Wingfield writes in the NY Times that Apple's present pricing strategy is a big change from the 1990s, when consumers regarded Apple as a producer of overpriced tech baubles, unable to compete effectively with its Macintosh family of computers against the far cheaper Windows PCs. Now within the premium product categories where Apple is most at home, comparable devices often do no better than match or slightly undercut Apple's prices. 'They're not cheap, but I don't think they're viewed as high-priced anymore,' says Stewart Alsop. Winfield writes that Apple uses its growing manufacturing scale and logistics prowess to deliver Apple products at far more aggressive prices, which in turn gives it more power to influence pricing industrywide, and one of Apple's pricing secrets has been it's willingness to tap into its huge war chest — $82 billion in cash and marketable securities last quarter — to take big gambles by locking up supplies of parts for years."
Re:True for tablets, not computers (Score:3, Funny)
Mossberg interview leak (Score:5, Funny)
Here's a leaked excerpt from the next edition of Walt Mossberg's Wall Street Journal column, where he reports on a recent interview with Tim Cook, Apple's newly ascended CEO:
I asked Cook what he thought his biggest challenges were. "Clearly," he replied, "China is our next big challenge. After the U.S. it's our second-largest market. But we're doing well there. We have 6 Apple Stores in China now."
And after China? "Our biggest challenge in the U.S. is the Slashdot market," he said without hesitation. "We haven't executed successfully in that market. But it's a big market, vital to our success, and we're going to aggressively pursue it. I've asked Phil (Phil Schiller, Apples Senior VP of Worldwide Product Marketing) to sit down with John Frazier and figure out a way to get our products onto the ThinkGeek web site."
Cook can't explain why the Slashdot crowd won't buy Apple products. "I don't understand it. OS X is based on Unix. We've been big contributors to the open source movement. But they persist in calling our customers 'Appletards' and 'fanbois.'"
Cook is normally a low-key guy, but the more he thought about all the lost Slashdot sales the more agitated he got. "I want the Slashdot market. I will have it. Once I have the Slashdotters, the world will be mine! MINE I TELL YOU!"
At this point I had to terminate the interview.
Re:Still high-priced (Score:2, Funny)
Not really. If you gear your marketing campaigns towards people who shouldn't even be let near a calculator you better factor in a large safety buffer for future customer service costs.
Re:Gambling (Score:5, Funny)
On the other other hand, if he does come back again and take control of Apple, I suspect their success will skyrocket....
Re:Screen size/resolution lock? (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, if only Apple had done some market research and prototyping, they would have picked the 7" size and wouldn't have seen the iPad get trounced by companies who picked the better form factor.