In a recent article, regarding Apple’s marketing, a Harvard business teacher, David Yoffie, claims that Apple’s announcement of the iPhone generated $400 million in free advertisement. And let’s be honest, did anyone manage to pickup a magazine or a newspaper in that same week and not know of the iPhone’s existence?

“No other company has ever received that kind of attention for a product launch,” Yoffie says. “It’s unprecedented.”

The rest of the article gives some of the reasons as to why Apple’s marketing strategies are always so successful. Apple owes a great part of their success due to the innovation of their products, and their ability to keep them simple.

Some Microsoft/Smartphone enthusiasts claim that the iPhone doesn’t do anything that a current-gen PDA can’t. If the battle was really about functionality, then the iPod would have been long dead by now, as there are hundreds of other DAPs that offer more features than it.

Being able “to do things” isn’t good enough anymore. I’m glad that the market agrees with that, and that companies are finally starting to open their eyes to that reality.