#FF00AA

To all iPhone customers:

Therefore, we have decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from either Apple or AT&T, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit towards the purchase of any product at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store. Details are still being worked out and will be posted on Apple’s website next week. Stay tuned.

It’s weird seeing Steve Jobs backtrack and give in to the customers’ complaints so soon — and in such an improvised fashion. Did they really not expect the $600 customers to make a fuss? Or was the price cut itself a last-minute decision?

I didn’t think twice about it at the time of its announcement (because the iPhone was overpriced to begin with, so it made sense to make it more affordable) but now I wonder how the decision process took place and what the motivations really were. On the one hand, you can’t really have a $300 8GB iPod touch while keeping the 8GB iPhone at $600 (and you can’t sell the iPod touch for $500, either); on the other, after the iPhone was launched there was no definite need for a touch-screen flash-based iPod anymore. You do have to consider the possibility that the iPhone hasn’t been selling as well as Apple expected (or hoped). And that they need an iPod touch to leverage the whole touch-screen interface, give the platform more weight, and recoup the few years of research and development.