Today was an interesting day for Apple and AT&T. It was the most anticipated smartphone release since last year, when Apple released the iPhone initially, and it left many customers with a bitter taste in their mouth.
This morning, at 8 am sharp, both Apple and AT&T opened their doors to a crowd seeking the fashion statement of the iPhone. In addition, the iPhone 2.0 software was released through iTunes to update older iPhones, granting access to the well hyped AppStore. As the first customers got hold of their brand new smarter than smartphones, the ability to activate the device began to fail. Users and AT&T sales representatives could no longer register the necessary information with Apple. As you can imagine, those who waited in line for hours on end, and days in some cases, were disappointed and didn’t know who to blame. AT&T continued to sell the phone. The inital policy given to the AT&T stores states that the phones were to be activated during the purchase. This quickly changed as managers realized waiting for the server to come back online was not a possibility and that customers could activate the phone for themselves through iTunes on their home computer.
Of the two major issues surrounding today’s release, that was the least concerning. Previous iPhone users were hit with the server crash on much harder note. Upon opening iTunes this morning, users were told to update their iPhones to the new 2.0 software. Everything was good to go until users tried to re-register their phones only to find that the server would not accept the information. This left all previous iPhone users who updated their software with "bricked" phones .
These two major problems are refelected in today’s closing value of Apple’s stock (AAPL). Since the World Wide Developers Conference, WWDC, where Apple announced the new iPhone and AppStore last month, the stock has dropped from approximately $186 to $172.
Apple didn’t dring their A game this year. Let’s hope they try and make up for such a poor product realease or they will have many supporters upset.
Food for thought: Did Steve Job’s phone work this morning?
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