iPhone users – Early adopters or suckers?

One more thought: My guess is that, back when the iPhone first came out with the original pricing -- when all these September products were in the pipeline but we didn't know about them -- the planned prices for the September products were also higher, and made sense with the original iPhone pricing. But then maybe Apple decided that it couldn't price the September products as planned.

Probably the iPod Touch was the culprit -- maybe sales and other feedback led them to think they wouldn't sell enough iPTs unless the entry point was $299. But they couldn't just lower the price of that product: If they price it too low it keeps people from buying iPhones, sothey couldn't reduce its price unless they also adjusted the iPhone pricing.

This is all speculation, but it would explain the poor timing of the price change.

Setting the price of a new product is a hard task. I'm certain a big team of smart people worked hard to come up with the original pricing, and they already had plans for all the products introduced this week. Part of their work would have been projecting sales and running "what-if" scenarios with assumptions for the price sensitivity of targeted users. They ran the numbers and decided that the number of people who would be turned off by the higher price would be offset by the increased profit from the actual buyers.

This price cut must indicate that sales haven't met Apple's expectations. Either their assumptions on price sensitivity were wrong, or things happened that they didn't anticipate (other products introduced, internal product changes, etc.). This kind of price cut is a big admission of error. It's also a bold step, very interesting.

Why do it now? Because they were falling short and have other stuff in the pipeline. They now believe they will make more profit in the long run with this lower price, and the sooner they take the hit and move on, the better.

A $100 store credit is obviously worth a lot less than a $200 price savings -- so early adopters are only getting part of their money back. They're still paying for the privilege of having the phones earlier.

I don't think it will have a long term effect on buying habits -- Apple doesn't want to make this mistake again, and people who buy things as soon as they're available won't change behavior.

As with all bad news, Apple gets some good news too. This "refund" is going to be discussed at length a lot of places, alongside other corporate damage control (Tylenol years back, pet food concerns this year, etc). All press is good press.