I think Steve Jobs has already been expected that large numbers of people hacked iphone. That’s why, they construct our product perception as iphone is an amazing product.

Here is the Steve’s Comment about this research
“So this dude on Wall Street named Toni Sacconaghi is out playing Sherlock Holmes and suggesting that the “4 million iPhones sold” figure that I touted at Macworld is bullshit. See the Fortune story about this here.

Toni reckons AT&T has only activated 2 million phones, and we’ve sold 350,000 in Europe and maybe we’ve sold 750,000 to people who unlocked them and didn’t activate on AT&T, which leaves 670,000 iPhones that we can’t account for. So he has got out his pipe and funny hat and is scouring the globe trying to find the missing iPhones.

Apple faithful, trust me on this. The phones are not lost. Okay? I just saw them, like, I don’t know, last week. Or was it just before Macworld? Tim Cook is trying to find the paperwork because he says he knows we shipped them and he can totally remember seeing the invoices but now he can’t remember where he put them but he swears they’re around here someplace. Ja’Red is on the job too.

All joking aside, let me tell you what this is really all about. Toni Sacconaghi thinks our stock is overpriced. He’s trying to knock down the shares so his predictions will come true. Probably there are some shorts in the market who are spreading this stuff too. And it’s working. We’re down to $133. They’d like to drive it down even more. I know what you’re wondering. Why do they hate us? Well, it’s the old story. They hate us for our freedom. They hate us because we’re so good, and our goodness drives them insane with jealousy.

As for all these rumors about how demand for iPhone isn’t as strong as we’d like and thousands of iPhones are all sitting in a warehouse because there’s no sell-through because the fanboys and early adopters have already early adopted and there’s no one buying them anymore and it’s not really a mainstream product? Please. How would we even do that? Like maybe we’d tell our European carriers that if they want to win the iPhone franchise they have to pre-order hundreds of thousands of units and stick them in a warehouse so we can notch them up as sold and recognize the revenue now even though the carriers haven’t sold them through to customers and might never sell them? Really? You really think we’d do that? You think we’d set ourselves up for that kind of catastrophe? Come on. Be real.

The truth is, there is phenomenal demand for iPhone. We can’t make them fast enough. In fact iPhone is the strongest selling product of any kind ever introduced ever in all of history, bar none. I mean, it’s a phone, a Web browser and a music player, all in one device. People said that couldn’t be done. Then we did it. We’re still super excited about that. We’re just super excited about iPhone and we’re totally excited that the rest of the world shares our excitement. Because that’s exciting. And we love excitement. It’s what we’re about. We’re an exciting company. And that’s really exciting.

I know what you’re thinking. Why not just break out the numbers and share more information and tell Toni Sacconaghi and his pals on Wall Street exactly where all the iPhones are? Well, we’re not going to do that. We’re not going to break out any numbers or share any more information on this topic or try to explain how we arrived at the 4 million figure. We’re just not going to do it, so stop asking. Mostly because we’re just so busy making these darn iPhones and we can’t take time away from that. Plus we’re also developing the Next Big Thing which is totally so amazing and you are not even going to believe it and I’m sorry but we just don’t have time to stop doing that amazing Nobel-quality work to mop up a few crumbs for the bastards on Wall Street. I’m sorry, but it’s beneath us. It just is. And don’t trot out the old thing about shareholders having a right to know, blah blah. That’s bullshit. It’s my company, and if you don’t like the way I run it, sell your fucking shares. Okay? We straight on that?

Anyway you’re just going to have to take my word for it on this iPhone thing. Just like with the options backdating thing. We did our own investigation, and we turned up no wrongdoing. Okay? So trust us. We’re the good guys. We’re the ones who are saving the world from Microsoft. If you want to be angry, get angry at them. Have you seen our ads about Vista? Come on, people. Focus.

For those of you who really need some extra help swallowing this, just gaze into the hypno-image above and remember our mantra: Microsoft bad, Apple good. Microsoft liars, Apple honest. Microsoft monopoly, Apple freedom. Microsoft secretive, Apple open.

Feel better? Me too. Peace.”
http://fakesteve.blogspot.com/2008/01/so-were-missing-few-hundred-thousand.html
Regards
Yüce Zerey
>>FF>> Marketing Trends

Apple has recently been making a lot of decisions that reflect a disconnect between its corporate strategy and the interests of its customers. For a company that has such a loyal customer fan base, this is a big problem that may result in people feeling disillusioned and upset with the company’s practices. Right now with the iPhone, it seems as if Apple cares more about collecting greater carrier based commissions than it does about the wants of its customers. The company saw an opportunity to bring in more revenues at the cost of restricting its customers, and they went with it – but the move may backfire because it’s so transparently greedy. The truth is that every iPhone customer has a different use for the phone and will want to have a carrier that best supports their needs and which can provide the best local service. Customers rightfully demand competition and Apple is fighting an uphill battle by trying to restrict its customers to only one carrier in every country. Almost without exception, each of Apple’s new firmwares, which update the phone and ‘re-lock’ unlocked phones, have been cracked in less than 24 hours of their release. These continued efforts from Apple serve no purpose other than to inconvenience Apple’s customers who will continue to re-unlock their phones, or to restrict the declining number of people who are unfamiliar with these software tools.

The same can be said of Apple’s software development on the iPhone. Although the phone does have some cool software available for it, the company decided from the start that, for the most part, only in-house software would be developed for the phone. They seemed to have forgotten the Mac, which put Apple on the map, and how it was the small but loyal community of fans that coded some of the best software for the Mac product. This was a community of people coming together, and collaborating, and sharing ideas, and brought together by a shared belief in the product. Only recently did Apple make adjustments to its strategy for the development of software on the iPhone, and it has released software development kits (SDK) that will support new customer innovations. As has been addressed in Wikinomics, it’s critical that firms realize the breadth of knowledge and ideas that lie outside the firm, and in this case, doing so will result in a plethora of creative and valuable new applications for the phone.

Apple should learn from the music industry, which is only now realizing the folly of trying to act against the interests of its customers. Instead of listening to what its customers want, both Apple and the music industry are saying “here’s what we’re selling, and this is how we’re going to sell it… take it or leave it.” But those customers are stubborn and smart, they communicate globally, and technology is now on their side. They don’t need to just ‘take it’ anymore because they can circumvent those corporate desires and then tell millions of other people how to do so as well. The music industry is finally taking steps to re-architect its distribution system to fit this modern digital age, and to a model that customers support. Apple understood that from the start and was quick to launch iTunes, but even so, they’re still battling the customer rather than working with them. Rather than making its technology fully accessible and convenient to use, iTunes applies Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology that restricts the application of songs, and which frustrates its customers greatly! Why? In this digital age, companies need to understand that the customer has more access to information and competitive choice than ever before. Successful enterprise now comes from working with your customers to be in line with their needs, and using them as a willing resource to promote or help build your product. And if you as a company are not willing to change, well, the world will change with or without you, and you’ll be left in the dust.