Apple's Machiavellian Price Discrimination

A few months after the iPhone debuted, Apple cuts the phone's price from $600 to $400. If this was Apple's plan all along, then it was one of the most Machiavellian examples of price discrimination ever seen.

By charging an initial high price for iPhones, Apple gets those who really want the iPhone to pay a premium price. Of course, this only worked because customers didn't expect the price of iPhones to so quickly fall over such a short time period. Apple essentially tricked early buyers of the iPhone into paying $600 because these customers were under the false impression that the price of iPhones wouldn't soon fall so dramatically.


Update: Apples is now offering early buyers of the iPhone a $100 store credit.