The temperature here in New England is in the 90s today, but there are some other places that are also hot — in a commercial sense that is. After stopping by the Danbury Fair Mall on an errand I happened to walk by the Apple store. It may have been short compared to those in Manhattan or San Francisco, but for this part of the world, it was quite a long line (see pictures here of the Apple Store Opening at Grand Central Station). We’ll have to wait to see the results, but I suspect there will be more then one million iPhone 4’s sold today.
Another hot item will be the newly re-priced Kindle. It was doing quite well at $259, and at $189 it will surely attract many more buyers. The iPad is very nice for reading books, but the Kindle excels for reading them in sunlight, and is adored by millions who don’t really want another computer — they just want an efficient and fun way to devour books. I suspect a new Kindle will be coming out this summer but at $189 you can’t go wrong. See link in patrickWeb store.
I have not seen any data to validate how hot or not it is but Gazelle claims to have a unique and proprietary model which predicts the current and future market value of electronic gadgets. There are fifty million iPhones out there and many users will want to sell them and upgrade to the iPhone 4. eBay is a logical way to do this but Gazelle provides another approach. After answering a few questions about the condition of your gadget, Gazelle instantly gives you a market price good for thirty days. If you like the price and don’t change your mind — there is no risk to you — you send your gadget in the prepaid box provided by Gazelle and they send you either a PayPal credit or an Amazon credit. If you choose the latter they add 5% to the guranteed amount. I made my Gazelle inquiry on June 9 and was given a price of $304 (plus $15 extra when I selected the Amazon credit). When I checked yesterday the price had dropped to $212 and it will, of course, continue to drop as iPhone 4 supply ramps up. I was surprised at the high price I got. Could be that they take the initial returns and sell them overseas where prices are higher. I have been an early adopter for decades and have found that staying on the leading edge and buying early is not that costly if you act quickly to sell the “old” gadget you are replacing. My iPhone 3GS left Connecticut via USPS Priority Mail yesterday. I did a hard reset first but Gazelle claims they do a data wipe for all devices they receive.