Presales of the much-anticipated iPhone 4 begin Tuesday, June 15, but unlike releases past, consumers now have a wide range of options for where to get the device. Apple Inc. is opening up its distribution strategy, and, under pressure from Android, it’s changing its brand identity rather significantly in the process.
Notably, it’s not just Apple stores and the Apple website that will take preorders starting Tuesday; Best Buy and Radio Shack will be doing so as well (the latter with a $50 deposit required). And, a new app in the App Store will let current iPhone owners easily request an upgrade, direct from the handset. Meanwhile, on launch day, June 24, the phone will be available at Best Buy, Radio Shack and Wal-Mart. The latter will have the iPhone 4 in stock at 1,500 of its 2,500 locations.
Offering the iPhone 4 in thousands of big-box retail outlets on launch day marks a big shift away from the limited, lines-around-the-block-inducing release strategy that Apple has employed for every other iPhone release. While AT&T Inc. has subsidized the iPhone to make it competitive with other smartphone offers in the market, Apple’s brand is an elite one. Apple assumes that its fanboys will pay more — much more — for excellence in design and user experience. It’s also a company famous for exerting an extraordinary amount of control over how and where the product is presented; Apple has always taken pains to distinguish the product — down to the sales experience — as more rarified than other gadgets on offer. Best Buy and Wal-Mart have been allowed to sell iterations of the iPhone in the past—but only once the initial, sales-driving release hype has died down.
The “iPhone for all” strategy is in part a counter to the success of Google Inc.’s Android mobile OS, which has taken its mantra of open, multi-smartphone distribution to the bank: Android phones are steadily gaining on the iPhone for mobile Web consumption in the North American home market. Analysts also say that Android devices cumulatively boast a higher overall market share in North America than Apple’s star gadget. The plethora of Android devices overwhelm the iPhone by sheer ubiquity; multiple carriers and multiple retail deals make it difficult to avoid Andoid when shopping for something new.
