This is an apples to oranges comparison though because Amazon and Apple do very different things. The thing is that unlike Amazon, Apple is primarily selling a platform. To some real extent, hackers are their competitive edge. (This is somewhat true of Amazon now that they're in cloud services I suppose, but that's still a negligible part of their overall business and has been great PR for them in the hacker community.)
The iPhone before the App Store was either a middling failure or a middling success, depending on your viewpoint, but it certainly wasn't a slam dunk. It was on track to undersell the 10 million projected handsets by the end of the calendar year (about 18 months after launch) even after severe price cuts. See this chart for unit counts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IPhone_sales_per_quarter_s...
The green bar marks where apps came in. The app store is most, if not all, of what made it the slam dunk it is today. It's hard to argue that people cared that much about 3G back then, especially AT&T customers.
So alienate the people who make the apps, and you lose a lot of the reason for customers to purchase an iPhone. Hence I'd argue that Apple's image among developers is a lot more important to their success than Amazon's.
It's hard to argue that people cared that much about 3G back then, especially AT&T customers.
Many them weren't AT&T customers. That green bar also coincides with the release of the iPhone in 22 countries (as opposed to only 6 for the original model), expanding by another 48 by the end of the year.
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This is an apples to oranges comparison though because Amazon and Apple do very different things. The thing is that unlike Amazon, Apple is primarily selling a platform. To some real extent, hackers are their competitive edge. (This is somewhat true of Amazon now that they're in cloud services I suppose, but that's still a negligible part of their overall business and has been great PR for them in the hacker community.)
The iPhone before the App Store was either a middling failure or a middling success, depending on your viewpoint, but it certainly wasn't a slam dunk. It was on track to undersell the 10 million projected handsets by the end of the calendar year (about 18 months after launch) even after severe price cuts. See this chart for unit counts: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:IPhone_sales_per_quarter_s...
The green bar marks where apps came in. The app store is most, if not all, of what made it the slam dunk it is today. It's hard to argue that people cared that much about 3G back then, especially AT&T customers.
So alienate the people who make the apps, and you lose a lot of the reason for customers to purchase an iPhone. Hence I'd argue that Apple's image among developers is a lot more important to their success than Amazon's.
It's hard to argue that people cared that much about 3G back then, especially AT&T customers.
Many them weren't AT&T customers. That green bar also coincides with the release of the iPhone in 22 countries (as opposed to only 6 for the original model), expanding by another 48 by the end of the year.
http://www.engadget.com/2008/06/09/the-lucky-22-countries-re...
That's true, I wonder if what % of sales were international though?
Uh, the green bars also mark the change in price from $399 to $200. Don't you think that might have been partly responsible?
It also marks release of iPhone 3G and extended availability of iPhone in the world.
That... is quite astounding. Almost 1000% growth from the previous quarter.
Thanks for showing that to me.