Twitter Team Would Rather Pay for iPhones Than Take Other Smartphones for Free
Apple.com/business has published a case study of micro-blogging darling, Twitter. Not surprisingly, Apple.com gives Twitter a lot of love for loving Apple products, especially the iPhone:
When it comes to availability, iPhones accommodate peoples’ needs to work remotely and stay connected with the Twitter team. Stone notes that Twitter remains loyal to iPhones even though other handset manufacturers offer them free equipment.
Not surprising. The price of a thing is seldom equal to its cost. If a free product takes you more time or resources or requires greater infrastructure to support, the cost of using it can rapidly grow higher than the dollar price of even a premium product or service.
For businesses that thrive on the technology the iPhone best supports, web, media, and a certain strategic perception and mind set, paying for iPhones is probably a much greater value than any “free” phone.
May 1st, 2009 at 1:19 pm
good point about value, but considering that blackberry users are huge twitter users, do we assume RIM was one of the companies offering free equipment?
May 1st, 2009 at 3:23 pm
They provide their product for FREE. Next they pay Apple for the phones. Now they provide FREE advertising to Apple. Will the Twitter boys ever figure out how to make money from their product. Sorry I could not avoid the nudge, nudge, wink, wink.
May 1st, 2009 at 3:42 pm
I’m surprised that Apple doesn’t give the free iPhones since that’s what their competition is doing.
May 1st, 2009 at 5:31 pm
Has apple even figured out that twitter doesn’t even work as intended unless you jailbreak the iPhone?
May 1st, 2009 at 5:37 pm
I want the twitter sticker that the girl has on her MacBook!
May 1st, 2009 at 6:16 pm
Well, that’s … sort of sweet. I mean, basically all smartphone owners on every platform (Palm, Blackberry, Android, Windows Mobile) have always paid for equipment rather than getting them for free. I think the iPhone has been uniquely successful at this, but let’s not get carried away, huh?