Derek Huang in his blog post, “Apple unveils refreshed iPhone 4S, but no iPhone 5”, talks about Apple Inc.’s marketing strategy of releasing the iPhone 4S instead of the iPhone 5. This announcement has disappointed the public, which was anticipating the release of the iPhone 5. Derek believes that this is a genius strategy created by Apple, because he thinks that Apple has inelastic demand. This means that Apple can adjust products and prices the way they want, while maintaining constant demand.

Although, Apple has not been impacted negatively by the release of its iPhone 4S, I think that, if Apple repeats this strategy again in the future, they will experience a large drop in sales. This is due to the fact that, in the cell phone market, the competition is increasing rapidly, which means that, if customers are disappointed by an Apple product, they would switch to another brand. If Apple releases the iPhone 5, then customers are expecting more features to be included since Apple has delayed the release. If Apple fails to satisfy customers in the future with the iPhone 5 then Apple should expect a significant loss of loyalty among its existing customer base.

Source: Picture