Apple refreshes the iPod lineup and adds new iPhone-alike model

by Volker Weber

ipod lineup

The iPhone went from 499/599 to (299)/399. For around 400 you now either get an iPhone with 8 GB or an iPod touch with 16 GB. I'd take the phone.

iTunes adds a ringtone maker which only works with tracks bought from the iTunes store. You get to pay another 99 cents for your ringtone. And the iPod touch lets you buy new tracks over Wi-Fi.

All prices in US$ or EUR. Nice rip off again.

Update: Early iPhone buyers were not amused seeing the price shlashed by one third within eight weeks. Apple CEO has now published an open letter announcing a $100 gift certificate to buyers which are not eligible for other rebates.

Comments

NB the 4GB iphone is dropped. You can only buy it in the clearance section of the Apple store. I'm disappointed at the Apple pricing yet again.

Andy Mell, 2007-09-05

Everyone (including me) keeps complaining at the disproportionate pricing this side of the pond; but we have to presume that Apple keep doing it, because people keep buying it. It has applied to all the hardware they have ever made, in my memory.

Anyone have any idea whether Apple do actually meet their sales expectations in Europe, even with the higher prices? It would be interesting to know....

Nick Daisley, 2007-09-05

The shuffle is $79, not $99, I think? I presume the Euro price will be 79 too.

John Keys, 2007-09-05

Wow, a 40%/33% price drop for the iphone after this short period of time?
Is this supposed to be a sales boost or philantrophy?

Either way, this seems like a pretty steep drop and a slap in the face for early adopters.

Marc Beckersjuergen, 2007-09-05

I'd like a 16 Gig iPhone - shouldn't be problem, should it?

Martin Hiegl, 2007-09-05

ugly colours. Not shiny any more. Still going to buy the (red) edition nano.

Jan Fuellemann, 2007-09-05

got a black nano now i hardly use , think ill get the iphone if it ever reach sales status here.

Flemming Riis, 2007-09-05

The $200 pricedrop for the iPhone is indeed making a lot of people angry. A 33% pricedrop after just 2 months for a product is quite a lot. Kinda like people paid $200 for the privilage of beta testing the product for them.

The apple discussion forums are overrun with complaints and the moderators can't seem to keep up on deleting the threads about the pricedrop ( and yes they are deleting them ). Apple may have sold approx 1 million iPhones but with this move they have now created approx 1 million unhappy customers.

Declan Lynch, 2007-09-05

BTW, Apple Expo Sept 25th...

Something tells me that a 16Gb iPhone will be released in Europe to slot into the $599 price slot now opened by the reduced price 8Gb iPhone. If they can do a 16gb iPod touch then a 16Gb iPhone won't be that hard to do. I'd also guess that a 16Gb iPhone would also see an upgrade to 3G for network so that the iTunes WiFi store would work well.

Declan Lynch, 2007-09-05

I wonder if the new Touch uses the same connector that the old school iPods used? Meaning, can I use my external speaker system, my car adapter, etc?

Alan Lepofsky, 2007-09-05

Alan - one of the components of the iPhone and iPod Touch is a "dock connector" ... it is not a direct dock cable to the iphone, but this device acts as a passthru.

John Head, 2007-09-06

I’m not one for defending Apple pricing—they can really hit people badly—but the current whingeing about the price drop is hilarious. If someone spent 500 bucks on a phone and didn’t think the price would plummet soon after, then more fool them.

Clearly the phone was worth the money to that individual, otherwise they wouldn’t have bought it. And everyone knew Apple had something iPod-related up their sleeve for this event.

Besides, I could never afford / justify something like this in a million years, so naturally I just find it all very funny :o)

Ben Poole, 2007-09-06

You had your Macbook last year. :-)

Volker Weber, 2007-09-06

Hey I wasn’t angling. LOL. I shall be buying a phone this month, now that my employer is taking theirs back. But it won’t be an iPhone, it will be something a little more sensible. Much as I like these gadgets, I could never justify spending more than a hundred quid on a phone (and even that’s pushing it). :o)

Ben Poole, 2007-09-06

You know, the real question is: "Do I want to pay (x)-hundred bucks to get me the 'I've got one and you don't!' effect?".
Around 1 million people loud and clearly answered "YES!!!" to that. You get what you pay for.

Stefan Rubner, 2007-09-06

So if an iPod Touch has WiFi, couldn't you run something like Skype with a headset/mic and turn it into a phone that way? No, it wouldn't work *everywhere*, but when you have a WiFi connection it should be faster than 2.5G or whatever they have now.

Kevin Pettitt, 2007-09-06

So the 4GB iPhone has been out for less than 3 months and it is already a dead product. That is just nuts.

I have to wonder if the iPhone is not selling as well as Apple was expecting. This seems like a very dramatic change in pricing strategy after only a few months.

Ken Porter, 2007-09-06

I picked up the iPhone on release day, knowing full well that there would be probably 2 price drops before Christmas 07. No biggie. $200 was a bigger drop than I expected for the first one though. As they were making about 50% profit on each phone, price drops were always on the cards.

Simon Barratt, 2007-09-06

Thanks for adding a "none" option. :-)

The only thing I use my 30GB iPod Video for is moving files back and forth between home and work, and I only have it because I won it as a door prize at our company holiday party last year. I just don't have much use for portable music and videos except when I'm flying, which I only do a few times a year and it's not a huge deal whether I have my iPod or not.

Charles Robinson, 2007-09-06

@Ken give that they released the sales figures, I don’t think that’s it. I just think Apple looked to recoup what must have been pretty heavy R&D costs, and also wanted to test the market. Seeing how many of the things flew out of the door at the original price, clearly this strategy worked. so now they move to the more realistic long-term pricing model. I don’t imagine they’re losing sleep about the people whingeing to be honest.

Ben Poole, 2007-09-06

Since nearly everyone in the US gets a locked cell-phone with a one or usually two year contract, then the cell commitment is approaching three thousand dollars. I am not quite sure I understand why people are so sensitive to the up-front phone cost.

Re poll: If size matters, then the iPod to get is the iPhone since it will be smaller fewer chargers than any cell+iPod combination. Otherwise to have much video, podcasts, or all your music get a iPhone plus a 160GB iPod.

Lee Davis, 2007-09-06

I'll voted for the iPod Touch as I can't get an iPhone where I live, but really, what I want is an iPhone with a 160 gb hard disk and built-in gps... aaaaah, that would pretty much be all I need.

Alex Boschmans, 2007-09-06

Interesting to see that many people who had purchased direct from Apple Store, are getting a $200 rebate on the original price of their iPhone - AT&T are not being so magnanimous.

Nick Daisley, 2007-09-06

@Lee: iPod charges over USB cable (+5V), so does also a number of cell phones.

For me iPhone is undesirable because it doe not speak to my Domino server, nor my domino Server speaks CalDAV. It also does not have a GPS reciver, and Sametime does not run on it. So my perfect combo is Blackberry 8820 + iPod Classic 160Gb (used as well as a portable drive and runs Notes Nomad).
Both are charged with the same charger. (well, you need the adapter for the iPod, but this one is just a pin adapter and would be extremely cheap if not for the license fees that apple charges for using the dock connector)

Gregory Engels, 2007-09-06

@Ben: Has Apple actually release sales figures for the iPhone? What I heard was they are still on target to sell 1 million iPhones before the end of this quarter. This is by no way a quotable sales figure and is nothing more than fluff.

I am skeptical of what Steve says in a media event; I've seen the spin before. But your explanation is probably more in line with what is really going on here. Either way, it does seem to be a dramatic departure from the pricing methods that Apple has historically used in the past.

Ken Porter, 2007-09-06

I know what you mean Ken, we all know about the reality distortion field eh ;o) But I’d say the figures look pretty decent for iPhone sales, and that they’re not far off the mark in their predictions for the end of September (e.g. 270,000 units sold in Q3). A possible clue to the pricing strategy is in this quote:

…the Company has also begun to compete with mobile communication
device companies that have substantial experience and technological and financial resources.


While the Company is widely recognized as a leading innovator in the personal computer and consumer electronics markets as well as a leader in the emerging market for distribution of digital content, these markets are highly competitive and subject to aggressive pricing…


(My emphasis). Form 10-Q quarterly report (PDF)

Ben Poole, 2007-09-06

Got a iPod shuffle 1GB last X-mas, 1 GB holds a decent selection of my musik, so I'm not sure I need a lot more storage capacity.

iPod touch and iphone are so close price wise that i might be tempted to get an iphone.
OTOH rumour has it that the iPhone will be locked to t-mobile here in Austria and I'm not considering a provider switch.
Quick glance at my MP3 collection size... hmmmm the complete collection should fit nicely on the smaller iPod classic.
Having the complete collection along with me is much more tempting.
AND there is no Notes/Sametime etc on the iPhone.

IF (big if) I buy one of the listed devices before X-mas 2007 then it will be a iPod classic (coke) and not the newfangled stuff.

Regards Martin

Ps.: On no Notes... anyone tried DWA with an iphone

Martin Forisch, 2007-09-06

Apple have just announced a $100 Apple Store Credit for early adopters.

DWA will come up with a screen saying that it is not certified for the browser but you can select the link to 'try it anyway' however it does not load perfectly. The old WebMail interface does work.

My guess is as soon as DWA supports Safari V3 then it will work on the iPhone.

I have my domino server setup for IMAP and that works great with the builtin mail client on the iPhone.

Declan Lynch, 2007-09-06

@Ben: I had forgotten about last quarter's financial statement. So I guess the two questions to which we will never know the answer are 1) is 270,000 units within Apple's expectation, and 2) how many have they sold since then.

I have to agree with Volker's new posting, it seems Apple mis-read the market and this price cut is an attempt to correct that.

For us non-US folk, this means the iPhone will be cheaper when it launches internationally! :-)

Ken Porter, 2007-09-07

followup to @Ben to @Ken

Apple released a press release in September about selling a million by the end of September. That certainly does not make it a fact, but my guess is that a company with a high P/E stock ( Apple had surpassed the HP+Compaq+DEC in net worth and hit twice Dell ) would be conservative about setting expectations for the financial community.

@gregory - Due to capacity, the 160GB is a logical choice, even for people with iPhones and certainly for users of other cells. Someone in line with me said he was buyng the iPhone because it was $30/mo cheaper data plan (20 vs 50) than Blackberry. While the berrys are quite popular, i can see me try to get a berry server to work with Domino for my small organization (just trying to find what version are compatible/upgradeable). And after the iCal annoyance ( when Lotus said its support of .ics files only meant .ics files from Domino, not outside) I have given up expecting any *cal support in Domino.

But I suspect that employees of a blackberry equipped enterprise will not change.

Lee Davis, 2007-09-10

update: @1mm "ahead of schedule"

NEW YORK (Reuters) - Apple Inc (AAPL.O: Quote, Profile , Research) said on Monday it has sold its one-millionth iPhone, a few weeks ahead of schedule, reassuring investors who had worried that last week's price cut signaled weak demand for the phone.

Lee Davis, 2007-09-10

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