I do in fact have a suggestion, however someone has already covered that here. Look, nobody is saying you have to be part of a multi-billion company to come up with a great idea. Here's the thing (and I'm not alone about this), you're saying Apple has absolutely no clue of how to market and sell their phones properly. That's just not correct. There's also a point of supply and demand.
Make it too easy for your customer to buy and they won't. Make it too cheap for your customer to buy and they won't. Believe it or not, it's human nature and it applies to you even if you try to deny it. Advertise the upcoming model months ahead of time for preorder and existing product will be ignored forcing overstock.
Thank you for the thoughtful reply. I'll try to address your points.
First of all, I'm not claiming Apple doesn't know what they're doing, quite the contrary, they're obviously doing a lot of things right. I'm not suggesting Apple reinvent the wheel here. In fact, the only change I would suggest would be to give existing iPhone owners the opportunity to preorder a phone that everyone knows is on the way, (Apple's own silence on the subject notwithstanding).
How does that help Apple? It would inform their manufacturing combinations, that is to say, those people that have pre-ordered specific color-carrier-storage versions would be a known thing. They would not have to guess about any of those orders.
There's just no point in your idea here. Please hear people out here without getting defensive. Just say Apple allowed people to pre-order 2 months ahead of the launch day. They get piled up full of orders and fill all of them. They would still have to produce enough phones for the people on launch day. That would require them to pre-determine how many phones to produce. There's no way of doing that. They could still have an increase in customer base upon launch day from people switching from Android to iOS.
Again, if anything, my plan reduces the amount of guess work on Apple's part. Your comment about requiring Apple to predetermine how many phones to produce, that's what they're doing now, isn't it? Any how does removing legacy customers from the forecast and guesswork impact new customers at all? Just asking.
Here's another thing for you. You can say this won't apply to you but for most people it will due to human nature. You pre-order a product 2 months ahead of time, then you start counting the days waiting for release day with high anxiety. Pre-ordering is no different than just waiting on launch day and ordering, then waiting for 2 months for delivery. Either way you're pre-ordering and waiting for delivery. What difference does it make if you order it on launch day, unless it's terribly important to you to be first on the block with a new toy. At that point that ties greatly into maturity and bragging.
It has nothing to do with bragging rights, or high anxiety. I've been on a consistent cycle with iPhones, I get a new phone every other year. I think being able to pre-order would reduce anxiety, but maybe that's just me. And the difference between a pre-order and getting a phone near launch day versus two months later is economic. If you're on a two year contract, part of your phone bill is paying for your subsidized phone. That is to say that once the two year contract has been satisfied, any additional billing cycles beyond that you're effectively paying above and beyond for a phone that is already paid for, since your bill isn't lowered just because you're out of contract.
Even with early pre-orders there's a great chance they won't have enough phones for everyone who wants to preorder because they still have to rely on their suppliers such as (Samsung, ouch) for available parts. Apple would still have to have a decent amount of phones on launch day. It would be disastrous if Apple satisfied all the pre-orders and had barely any phones for launch day due to limited parts from their suppliers.
I don't see how having preorders changes any of that.. Presumably they would have an even better idea of how many phones and configurations they would actually need on launch day. They wouldn't have LESS phones simply because some of the orders are known.
AND, if they cut off some of the preorders and had phones available for people on launch day they would piss off the customers that were attempting to pre-order. There's no win here, that's why your idea doesn't make for good business. Not trying to put you down here, I've had my own business for nearly 15 years. I know how the system works.
Preorders could be prioritized in terms of when they were placed. Not everyone that orders the same HOUR under the current system has their order filled either, so people are going to be annoyed either way.
I'm not saying it's a perfect system, but it could be a good loyalty reward for long term iPhone customers
