As always, an interesting article from Robert Cringely. All about Steve and the iPhone price drop.

I was surprised when talking to random friends to hear how many of them thought that the price drop was a “desperate” move by Apple to sell their excess inventory of iPhones. My take on it is that it’s an aggressive and totally calculated move to outdo the 1 million units sold benchmark by the end of this year. Apple needs to secure a good chunk of the cell phone market this Christmas to be a credible force next year. This is a good way to do it and it also doesn’t hurt to charge early adopters extra money.

Cringely also has a good take on the gift certificates. I didn’t think about it at first, but it’s quite true that many of the customers that will be getting these gift certificates are not current purchasers of other Apple products. This is a great way to make them buy more stuff and Apple is still going to make a profit on that 100$.