Just six or so hours after offering a $100 service credit to new subscribers who purchase a Palm (PALM) Pre and port their numbers over from another carrier, Sprint canceled it. Here’s the company’s official statement on the matter:

“After further internal review today, the offer of a port-in service credit of $100 to new customers who buy the Palm Pre has been pulled, because it was put into the system in error.”

 
The company tells me it will honor its obligation to anyone who purchased a Pre during the brief window in which this offer was open.

Remarkably, the offer page is still live on Sprint’s site as I write this. Unbelievable. What a Keystone Kops-style marketing blunder.

And, of course, it will sooner or later. Certainly, the Semiconductor Industry Association, which provided the sales numbers above, thinks so. Earlier this week, it called on the U.S. House of Representatives to pass the $700 billion financial rescue package before it. “Consumer demand accounts for more than two-thirds of the U.S. economy,” said SIA president George Scalise. “A slowdown in sales of a broad range of consumer products such as personal computers, cellphones, and entertainment electronics would have an adverse impact on semiconductor sales in the fourth quarter, which is normally the strongest quarter for the chip industry. The entire supply chain, including our suppliers and customers, will be harmed if access to credit becomes difficult.”

To make amends for the outage, Netflix plans to apply a 15 percent credit to billing statements of members whose DVD shipments were delayed.

A welcome turn of events after an ugly week that saw Netflix customers losing their patience and the company losing an estimated $1.8 to $3.6 million in revenue each day because of the disruption.

In remarks at the Westminster eForum on Web 2.0 this week in London, Jim Cicconi, vice president of legislative affairs for AT&T (T), said the Internet will hit its capacity in 2010. “The surge in online content is at the center of the most dramatic changes affecting the Internet today,” Cicconi said. “In three years’ time, 20 typical households will generate more traffic than the entire Internet today. We are going to be butting up against the physical capacity of the Internet by 2010.”

Clearly, some bigger tubes are in order here–$55 billion worth of them, according to Cicconi, who was quick to note that it will be companies like AT&T footing the bill for them. “There is nothing magic or ethereal about the Internet–it is no more ethereal than the highway system,” he said. “It is not created by an act of God, but upgraded and maintained by private investors.”

Ah yes, private investors. Like the ones who promised in the mid-1990s to provide fiber-optic connections to millions of households across the country in exchange for some $200 billion in tax cuts? The ones who never delivered on that promise, content to pocket direct tax credits of, on average, $2,000 per subscriber, without fulfilling their end of the bargain? Those investors?

New rule: stop bitching that Apple cut the price of the iPhone. Early adopters always pay a premium. Early adopters being a business term meaning dips***s who stand in line for six hours for a freaking phone. It’s not a price cut, it’s a repeal on the nerd tax. If you didn’t have to be the first on your block to have the latest gizmo, you’d now have an extra $200 to spend on your imaginary girlfriend.”

–Bill Maher on the iPhone price cut

Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak is as peeved as anyone about the iPhone’s recent price cut–more so because he’s apparently purchased upward of 20 of them for friends (friends like Kathy Griffin?).

During a Q&A session this past weekend at the ConnectWise Partner Summit in Tampa, Fla., Wozniak lambasted Apple for dropping the iPhone’s price by $200 just 68 days after bringing it to market. “Nobody expects a product to drop that much in price in such a short time,” Wozniak told CRN. “Steve Jobs and everyone expects technology to drop in price. The first adopters always pay a premium. I am one of them. I am used to that. But that one was too soon, too harsh.”

Wozniak was critical of Apple’s $100 iPhone credit plan as well, noting that it’s not exactly worth $100. “Why don’t you just take my receipt and give me the money back? And of course it always comes back to Apple Store credit. So instead of getting $100 back you are getting $50 back, sort of. It is very optimal to the company. I feel badly about the situation for everyone. I don’t think Apple should have even done it. Maybe a very much more gradual price reduction, $50 at first, or find ways to bundle it into a savings on your account.”

To all iPhone customers:

I have received hundreds of emails from iPhone customers who are upset about Apple dropping the price of iPhone by $200 two months after it went on sale. After reading every one of these emails, I have some observations and conclusions.

First, I am sure that we are making the correct decision to lower the price of the 8GB iPhone from $599 to $399, and that now is the right time to do it. iPhone is a breakthrough product, and we have the chance to “go for it” this holiday season. iPhone is so far ahead of the competition, and now it will be affordable by even more customers. It benefits both Apple and every iPhone user to get as many new customers as possible in the iPhone “tent.” We strongly believe the $399 price will help us do just that this holiday season.

Second, being in technology for 30-plus years I can attest to the fact that the technology road is bumpy. There is always change and improvement, and there is always someone who bought a product before a particular cutoff date and misses the new price or the new operating system or the new whatever. This is life in the technology lane. If you always wait for the next price cut or to buy the new improved model, you’ll never buy any technology product because there is always something better and less expensive on the horizon. The good news is that if you buy products from companies that support them well, like Apple tries to do, you will receive years of useful and satisfying service from them even as newer models are introduced.

Third, even though we are making the right decision to lower the price of iPhone, and even though the technology road is bumpy, we need to do a better job taking care of our early iPhone customers as we aggressively go after new ones with a lower price. Our early customers trusted us, and we must live up to that trust with our actions in moments like these.

Therefore, we have decided to offer every iPhone customer who purchased an iPhone from either Apple or AT&T, and who is not receiving a rebate or any other consideration, a $100 store credit toward the purchase of any product at an Apple Retail Store or the Apple Online Store. Details are still being worked out and will be posted on Apple’s Web site next week. Stay tuned.

We want to do the right thing for our valued iPhone customers. We apologize for disappointing some of you, and we are doing our best to live up to your high expectations of Apple.

Steve Jobs
Apple CEO