On the heels of all the drama with Apple’s iPhone price cut last week, the Cupertino giant issued a press release this morning announcing that it has already sold one million iPhones, at least 20 days earlier than expected. Apple sold one million iPhones in 74 days, a milestone that took two years for the iPod to achieve.
This is not quite a fair comparison — the iPod was introduced in October 2001, but was available only for Mac computers for almost a full year after its debut. But still, one million iPhones is a healthy sales figure that should put to rest doubters of the iPhone’s future.
The real question is: why is Apple telling us this now, instead of last week when Steve Jobs could have touted the figure during Apple’s quasi-disastrous dog-and-pony show? Is it possible the price cuts announced last week spurred a flood of new buyers? (I think so. Many people I’ve encountered have lusted after my iPhone — I know some of them were pushed off the fence when the price cut was announced.)
Or is it possible that Apple kept this good news, i.e. that it would top the one-million mark 20 days early, in its hip pocket, with the idea that it might need an upbeat announcement following the iPhone price cut? That’s a possibility too. Both scenarios could be right.
Apple 2.0 puts it best:
Color me cynical. It’s possible that the price cut Jobs sprang on us on Wednesday boosted sales just enough in the four days afterward to put the iPhone over the 1 million mark on Sunday.Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 12:06 PM | Print | Comments (0)
It’s also possible that the timing of today’s announcement was a decision driven less by sales figures than by public relations. Why bury a piece of news like this in an event crafted to spotlight the new iPod line when you can save it for just before the stock market opens in New York on Monday, when it will make a much bigger splash?
The ongoing battle between Apple and the content community is an endless source of fascination if you’re a media analyst (and based on the abundant headlines, even if you’re not.) As I posited last week, Apple has got to gain control over content suppliers if it’s going to continue banking on the stream of movies and TV shows to fuel sales of its phenomenal iPod, iPhone and Apple TV product lines.
The latest development in the fight between Apple and Hollywood is Apple’s plan to cut TV show download prices in half, a plan that the studios, to be it mildly, have not embraced. So, the tension mounts — either Apple has to concede more power to content suppliers or start investing in content that it controls.
The New York Times’ David Carr puts it nicely in this piece about Apple’s recent round of unaccustomed jolts. He likens Apple to a gun and TV networks, or content creators generally, to the bullets.
With a ubiquitous installed base — iTunes has been downloaded 600 million times and there are more than 100 million iPods out there — Apple has the biggest media application on earth. Networks and music companies have some bullets, but Mr. Jobs owns the gun.
I think this means that Apple wields the power in this struggle, because, after all, it’s easy to make bullets but hard to make a gun. But later Carr does something of an about-face, using yet another analogy (this one real estate-based), saying that Apple might lose gadget buyers if it doesn’t own the content.
Apple has built a hardware-based kingdom, rendered beautiful to the touch. But my love of the iPod is still driven by all the things I can put on it. If the gated community loses a lot of cultural real estate, will I need to keep my address there?
See, this is an interesting case study. It’s hard to tell who is the gun or who is the bullet or who is the gated community in this stand-off. I’d say that Apple is the gated community only if it buys up a lot of cultural real estate.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 9:16 AM | Print | Comments (0)
The Washington Post has a page one article today about the Chinese government’s ongoing efforts to snuff out information critical of the regime. Penned by Edward Cody, the piece offers insight into the fine tooth comb officials apply to all electronic communications — Internet and cell phones, two modes of communication that are increasingly uncontrollable challenges to the ruling party’s iron-fisted policies.
In an effort to snoop out the billions of web and phone-based conversations, the “Central Propaganda Department” has recruited 30,000 spies to snoop on electronic communications and has deployed little cartoon cop figures that pop up on computer screens to remind people that they are being watched. Just imagine what kind of paranoia this kind of monitoring engenders.
Compounding the fears is the fact that it’s not always clear what censors find jailable offenses. Some of the offenses are clearly political and critical of the government. One man was imprisoned briefly for writing a ribald ditty dealing with the closing of a public school, which he blamed on Communist Party officials. A woman was arrested for disputing official reports of a death toll stemming from a flood.
But, other offenses are hard to categorize. An intern at a little-known website got in hot water for poking fun at the death of a local party official, who died of carbon monoxide poisoning while having a sexual tryst in a car that had the motor running. A woman attracted the negative attention of authorities for misunderstanding something she read in a government-sanctioned publication, China Daily.
But the bottom-line of the piece is that the Chinese government continues to ramp up efforts to maintain censorship in the chaotic world of electronic communications.
Posted by Cynthia Brumfield at 8:50 AM | Print | Comments (0)
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