TakeAway: MSBers: Remember back in MarkStrat when we learned that a “Direct Hit” targeting strategy was better than a “Tweener” strategy?
Apple seems to feel the same way about the iPod touch.
Kind of caught in no man’s land (not as cheap as the iPod nano, not as awe-inspiring as the iPhone), Steve Jobs and his crew have decided to position the touch against Nintendo DS and Sony PSP as a portable video game player.
Their advantage? How about competitive prices on hardware, cheaper games with a wider selection, and, oh yeah, that delicious-looking fruit with a bite taken out of it.
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Excerpted from Forbes, “Steve Jobs Takes Aim At Competitors” By Brian Caulfield, September 9, 2009
Steve Jobs was there . A tablet computer was not.
Jobs, however, did drag out a big bag of pain for Nintendo, Sony and Cisco from wherever he has been hiding this year.
The nastiest move: tacking a video camera onto Apple’s iPod nano.
Cisco’s Flip camera, by contrast, starts at $149 for a device with half the storage and no music player. In short: “We’re going to lower the price from $149 to free,” Jobs said.
Jobs also slashed the price of the iPod touch to $199 as he unveiled a new ad that positions the tiny touch-screen tablet as a Nintendo DS killer. The new tag line for the commercial Apple will soon be using to carpet bomb the competition: “next-level fun.”
Apple was eager to make unflattering comparisons between the Sony PSP and Nintendo DS.
Apple’s pitch: Apple’s games are cheaper; the iPhone and iPod touch’s built-in App Store makes buying games more convenient; and Apple has more of them. Apple now offers 21,178 games, compared to 3,680 available for the Nintendo DS and 607 for Sony’s PSP.
Edit by JMZ
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Full Article
http://www.forbes.com/2009/09/09/ipod-iphone-apple-technology-enterprise-steve-jobs_print.html
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The Homa Files 
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