161
Chapter 6 – Practice Cases
and Brain Teasers
“Practice does not make perfect. Only perfect
practice makes perfect.”
--- Vince Lombardi
Practice Case #1: Apple iPhones: turning
marketing hype to reality
Apple’s Steve Jobs announced in the 2007 Mac-World that
iPhones will be sold nationwide to Cingular Wireless
customers at a price of $599 per phone, for a two-year
contract. As part of the marketing exercise, he also hyped that
iPhones will become part of the daily life for the top 1% of all
cell phone users. Currently, close to a billion cell phones are
sold per year world-wide. Jobs claimed to sell 1% of a billion,
or 10 million iPhones a year. However, Apple failed from its
lofty goals by a 50% margin, and sold only a million iPhones
in the first seventy-four days.
To penetrate the targeted consumer segments, Apple has
slashed prices by $200. Simultaneously, Apple managers are
at work day and night to make the vision of selling 10 million
iPhones every year a hard reality. To start with, they have
coupled iPhone sales with incentives like $100 store-credit for
phones bought after a certain date. Also, they have hired you
as the consultant to get the outsider’s view. Your engagement
will culminate with a presentation to Steve Jobs himself.
If your presentation goes well, your firm will get bigger
opportunities to work with Apple executives on everything
Copyrighted Material
