"Brothers, Google and Apple are about to release their phones. Which one should I choose?"
"My dear brother, you should wait until they are actually released before considering that issue!"
This was a post from a US mobile phone forum in July 2007. Thanks to the intense publicity campaigns launched by Google and Apple since January 2007, both companies had been the hottest topics online for the entire second half of the year. Even new models released by Nokia and Motorola couldn't compare in popularity to Google and Apple.
It could be said that the anticipation for Apple and Google's releases in this world far surpassed that of another world.
In that other world, after the first generation iPhone was released, its total sales reached 3.6 million units before the next generation phone was launched. This figure, regardless of the era, was not considered a top-selling model. After all, since the iPhone 4, Apple had not released any phone with global sales below 50 million units.
This was mainly because Apple had only held a press conference for the first generation iPhone, which didn't generate much widespread attention globally. Only Apple's core fans purchased their products.
Here's a funny anecdote: when the first iPhone was released, many fans considered it not a phone, but an evolution of the iPod, a device capable of making calls.
Therefore, the sales of the first generation iPhone ultimately reached 3.5 million units.
But this time, it was different. The publicized battle between Google and Apple had successfully made the iPhone and Google phones breakout hits. Currently, mobile phone users worldwide were eagerly awaiting products from both companies, constantly watching reviews of these products online.
What left these users in despair was that despite six months of online promotion, neither phone had announced global sales. However, some scalpers were managing to obtain so-called review units.
The price of a single review unit exceeded $3,000, more than six times the eventual retail price of these phones. Based on the prices announced by both companies at their January press conferences, both the first generation iPhone and the first generation Google phone were priced at $499, not even reaching $500. Compared to Apple's current prices often exceeding $1,000, they were indeed very affordable.
However, this period of anxious waiting for global fans was finally coming to an end. On the afternoon of July 1st, Apple's official website quietly published an announcement stating that they were officially opening online and offline pre-orders. Users could deposit online or pay a deposit at Apple Stores to reserve an iPhone.
Then, on August 1st, they could claim their iPhone by presenting their reservation.
According to Apple's announcement, there would be over 500,000 iPhones available on August 1st, so users could pre-order with confidence, assuring them they would get their desired phone.
Apple originally thought that 500,000 reservation slots would be more than enough. After all, the deposit for pre-ordering was as high as $99, and most users would likely be unwilling to pay such an expensive deposit for a phone they could only purchase a month later.
To their utter surprise, within just three hours, all online reservation slots were filled. Over 200,000 users paid the $99 deposit using the Western Mustang Wallet payment method and provided their preferred offline store address for pickup.
According to the rules, if the phones were not picked up at the stores by August 7th, the orders would be automatically canceled, but the $99 deposit would not be refunded.
With this rule in place, it was believed that these 200,000 phones were definitely sold.
After the online reservation slots were filled, people naturally flocked to the nearest offline stores. By the evening of July 1st, before most Apple Stores closed, their reservation slots were also completely sold out. All 500,000 slots were gone within a single day.
This situation stunned everyone at Apple. They had never encountered such a scenario or sales volume before. Even Steve Jobs himself was bewildered by these astonishing sales figures.
Apple had been in business for 20 years, initially selling personal computers. Although they had sold tens of millions of units, this was accumulated over one or even several years.
When any new product was launched, sales would at most be around 100,000 units, with sales gradually increasing as the market developed and product reputation grew.
Among all the products Apple had publicly launched, the best pre-order performance belonged to the iPod 2.
Thanks to the excellent reputation of the first generation product, the iPod 2 achieved 300,000 pre-orders on its release day, a result that made everyone at Apple ecstatic at the time.
While 300,000 and 500,000 pre-orders might seem similar, the iPod was essentially just an MP3 player priced at $99. Almost all young Americans could afford such a product, so achieving 300,000 pre-orders was not difficult.
However, a mobile phone was different.
The total price of the iPhone was $499, and a $99 deposit was required for pre-order. This effectively excluded almost all students and troublemakers. Only consumers with successful careers, or at least stable jobs, could afford to pay the deposit.
Initially, Apple estimated that pre-order sales of around 200,000 would be a top-tier start. Now, they had achieved 500,000.
And this was due to the quantity limit of only 500,000 units. Otherwise, if pre-orders had been completely open, Apple even believed the total pre-order volume could have reached an astonishing 1 million units, which would have been a sales miracle in history.
Facing Apple's achievement, the greatest pressure naturally fell on Google. As Apple's competitor for the past six months, Google had been directly targeting them in advertising. Now that Apple had announced sales and achieved 500,000 pre-orders, Google had no comparable results, which put immense pressure on everyone at Google.
Goldman Sachs was also angered. Their phones rang directly at Google's headquarters that evening, questioning why Google hadn't announced the sale of the Google phone yet.
"Is the Jiangnan Group holding back our inventory? That's why we can't sell on August 1st?" a Goldman Sachs representative asked angrily, instinctively blaming Mr. Huang.
Unexpectedly, someone from Google shook their head and replied, "This has nothing to do with the Jiangnan Group. The Jiangnan Group has treated everyone equally. Their phones will arrive on July 10th. I heard that both Google and Apple have 500,000 units each, with no preferential treatment!"
"Why haven't you rushed to announce the sales date?" Goldman Sachs became anxious.
"This... it's mainly a problem with the sales channels..." the Google representative said helplessly. "We are not like Apple. Apple has spent 20 years establishing hundreds of offline stores across the United States. They have stores in all major cities, so they can quickly deploy products nationwide through their own stores."
"But we are different. We are an internet product company and have no physical stores to sell Google phones!" the Google representative said helplessly.
"Such an obvious issue, haven't you considered it and thought of corresponding solutions?" the Goldman Sachs representative was amused by this.
Sales channels are such an important matter, a problem so obvious that everyone knows to prioritize solving it. Goldman Sachs assumed Google had already found solutions. To their surprise, Google was still troubled by this issue, which was simply comical!
Are all the people at Google idiots?
Facing the anger of the Goldman Sachs representative, the Google representative calmly replied, "This issue was naturally considered from the very beginning. We believe that in the short term, we cannot compete with Apple in terms of offline stores. Therefore, our senior management unanimously agreed that we should fully develop sales through another channel to achieve differentiated competition with Apple!"
"Oh, and what channel is that?"
"E-commerce!"
"E-commerce!" the Goldman Sachs representative was amused upon hearing this. "You should have said so earlier. The problem of e-commerce is the easiest to solve. The largest e-commerce platform in the country, Wanbaoge, is an enterprise under Goldman Sachs. I will arrange for you to cooperate and let Wanbaoge exclusively represent the online sales of Google phones!"
"This..." the Google representative's expression became even more peculiar. He sighed deeply and said, "Actually, sir, we had already communicated with Wanbaoge from the very beginning. We even collaborated for three months and drafted a very detailed cooperative sales plan..."
"But we later discovered that cooperating with Wanbaoge was an absolute mistake. We cannot cooperate with e-commerce websites like Wanbaoge, so our cooperation completely ended three days ago, and now we cannot find a suitable sales agent!" the Google representative said helplessly.