Just One More Great Reason for your Customers to “Case” their iPhone 4

Apple held an iPhone 4 press conference last Friday morning, July 16th, at Apple Town Hall in California to address the “antennagate” issue that has been so publicized in the media since the phone’s release. Here’s a quick recap of what happened:

The conference opened with a YouTube video, titled “the iPhone 4 antenna song”, the chorus stating “if you don’t want an iPhone 4 don’t buy it, if you bought one and you don’t like it, bring it back”.

An amusing intro to tame the undoubtedly serious tone surrounding the media-hyped “design flaw” of Apple’s new flagship product. The overall theme of the morning can be summarized in Jobs opening statement: “We love our users…we want to make all of our users happy. If you don’t know that about Apple, you don’t know Apple. We love making our users happy”.

Jobs detailed the facts about smartphone reception issues for a number of popular smartphones on the market, from Blackberries to HTCs. “Phones aren’t perfect” Jobs said. He went on to show that all of the recent additions to the smartphone market can be similarly affected when held in the “death grip”. Regardless of these issues for the iPhone, or any other device, the iPhone 4 has been consistently and across the board reviewed as the #1 smartphone, both from critics and in customer satisfaction.

AppleCare data suggests that out of the current 3 million iPhone 4 customers, only 0.55% of users called in about reception issues, versus the 6% with the 3GS. However, Jobs went on to say that “it’s hard to escape the conclusion that there is a problem, but that problem is affecting a very small number of users. I get emails saying the phone works perfectly, and they can’t understand what this is all about. So we think it’s affecting a small batch, but it has to do with inherent problems in smartphones. But we want all of our users to be happy.”

Therefore, Apple is providing a number of solutions to current iPhone 4 purchased through September 30th:

- The already updated iOS 4.0.1 which fixes the way the signal bars report and other bugs
- A free case for every iPhone 4 (apply on Apple Website starting late next week)
- A refund if you bought a bumper
- A full refund for the iPhone for (returned undamaged iPhone 4 within 30 days of purchase)

Jobs went on to announce the white iPhone, which starts shipping at the end of the month. As well, the iPhone will be shipping to 17 more countries on July 30th.

In conclusion Jobs stated: “We do this because we love our users, and if we screw up, we pick ourselves up and we try harder. And when we succeed, they reward us by staying our users. We take this really personally. Maybe we should have a wall of PR people keeping us away from this stuff, but we don’t, we take it really personally. So we’ve worked the last 22 days on this trying to solve the problem. And we think we’ve gotten to the heart of the problem.”

For the first time ever, Apple has openly encouraged iPhone users to use a case for their iPhone. This provides customers with just one more reason to add to the long list of benefits in using a case for their iPhone 4. Although Apple is providing free bumpers to their current customers, it is likely that these customers will be looking for alternative cases immediately or in the very near future. This event provides an open door to a large number of customers who were uninterested in using a case for their iPhone in the past.  Additionally, the large number of customers who will purchase an iPhone 4 after the “free case window” (after September 30th) will also have one more good reason to purchase a case or bumper for their new phone. This gives resellers a great opportunity to leverage the benefits of utilizing a case with the iPhone 4 to a whole new base of users.