September 28 in business history: a $199 tablet, a rescue that lasted five days, and a warning that halved the stock
Three September 28s — Amazon's $199 Kindle Fire in 2011, the Benelux rescue of Fortis in 2008, and Apple's profit warning in 2000 — show what each decision assumed somebody else would do, and what arrived instead.
Three September 28s, and one question asked three ways: what does this decision assume that somebody else will do?
In 2011 Amazon priced a tablet at $199 and assumed the buyer would come back to Amazon for films, songs and books. In 2008 three governments put €11.2 billion into Fortis over a weekend and assumed that would steady the group's funding. In 2000 Apple assumed a normal September and told the market it had been wrong. Each decision was one company's to make. Each outcome turned on somebody else's answer.
A price that assumed the next purchase
On Wednesday, September 28, 2011, at a press conference in New York, Amazon announced four devices at four prices. The basic Kindle e-reader came in at $79, the new touchscreen Kindle Touch at $99, the Kindle Touch 3G at $149, and a 7-inch colour tablet called the Kindle Fire at $199 1.
The Fire was the one that mattered. Amazon put it at less than half the price of a full-sized tablet. NPR's report that morning described the target as buyers "who haven't felt like an iPad was essential enough to spend more than $500 to acquire" 2.
Jeff Bezos set out the strategy in the announcement itself. "We're offering premium products, and we're doing it at non-premium prices," he said 1. The Fire shipped with a free month of Prime, free storage of Amazon purchases in the company's cloud, a browser built to run part of its work on Amazon's servers, and a store holding more than 100,000 films and television episodes, 17 million songs and a million Kindle books 1. The $199 bought the hardware. The films, songs and books were where Amazon expected the money.
The buyer did come back. Amazon's fourth-quarter release, published on January 31, 2012, reported that Kindle unit sales — the Fire and the e-readers together — rose 177% during the nine-week holiday period ending December 31, 2011. It also said the Fire was the best-selling, most gifted and most wished-for product among the millions of items Amazon sold, seventeen weeks after it went on sale 3. "We are grateful to the millions of customers who purchased the Kindle Fire and Kindle e-reader devices this holiday season, making Kindle our bestselling product across both the U.S. and Europe," Bezos said 3. Net sales that quarter rose 35% to $17.43 billion, and net income fell 58% to $177 million from $416 million 3.
Decision mirror: Three years later Amazon ran the same play in phones, where a mobile carrier stood between the company and the buyer. The Fire Phone went on sale in July 2014 at $199 with a two-year contract from AT&T, the only American network that stocked it, or about $600 without one; the price was cut to 99 cents at the start of September 4. In the third quarter of 2014 Amazon took a charge of about $170 million, chiefly for Fire Phone inventory valuation and supplier commitment costs, and told analysts it was holding about $83 million of Fire Phone stock 4. With tablets, Amazon owned the store the buyer returned to. With phones, the carrier owned the shelf.
A rescue that assumed the funding would hold
On the evening of Sunday, September 28, 2008, the governments of Belgium, the Netherlands and Luxembourg agreed to inject €11.2 billion of capital into the national subsidiaries of Fortis Bank, taking interests of about 49% in each. It was agreed at the same time that Fortis would sell its shares in ABN AMRO 5. The Dutch tranche — €4 billion for 49% of Fortis Bank Nederland — was never carried out, and inside the week it had been replaced by the purchase of every Dutch subsidiary of the group 56.
The parliamentary inquiry that examined the rescue afterwards put the cause inside the company. Fortis, it found, had made "a deliberate choice to pursue a takeover of the ABN AMRO consortium without conducting any prior extensive due diligence", in a bid that was "largely in cash, thus entailing additional risk" 5. Fortis's share of that purchase came to €24 billion, funded by a €13.4 billion rights issue in October 2007 7. On June 26, 2008, the company announced a package to raise more than €8 billion: a €1.5 billion share sale, up to €2 billion of preference shares, €2 billion of asset sales, and the €1.3 billion it saved by skipping its interim dividend. Its shares fell 19.4% that day to €10.20, a five-year low 7. The inquiry concluded that "the problems at Fortis were caused by its own actions", and that without the weekend's intervention bankruptcy on Monday, September 29, was very likely 5.
Days rather than months settled the shape of the company. On Friday, October 3, the Dutch state bought Fortis Bank Nederland, including its stake in ABN AMRO, together with Fortis Verzekeringen Nederland and Fortis Corporate Insurance, for €16.8 billion. The price covered 97.8% of the bank, and the state also took on €34 billion of short-term debt 56. On October 5 the Belgian state bought the remaining 50% plus one share of Fortis Bank for €4.7 billion in cash, and BNP Paribas agreed to take 75% of that bank along with the whole of Fortis Insurance Belgium. The consideration came to €14.5 billion: about €9 billion in 132.6 million new BNP Paribas shares for the banking business, and €5.5 billion in cash for the insurer 89. The €10.4 billion of impaired structured credit inside the bank went into a separate vehicle owned 66% by Fortis, 24% by the Belgian state and 10% by BNP Paribas 8. The Dutch state's payments to Fortis and ABN AMRO together reached €66.8 billion, of which the inquiry counted about €32 billion still open when it reported 5.
Decision mirror: The two states are still selling the pieces. The Dutch holding company NLFI owned 30.5% of ABN AMRO — the bank formed by merging Fortis's Dutch operations with ABN AMRO's Dutch business — and on September 9, 2025 announced a plan to reduce that to about 20%. The plan is the fourth sell-down since ABN AMRO listed in November 2015 510. Belgium held 25% of BNP Paribas Fortis until November 13, 2013, when it sold the stake for €3.25 billion and booked a capital gain of about €900 million 11.
A quarter that assumed a normal September
Apple's warning went out after the close of trading on Thursday, September 28, 2000. The company said its quarter ending September 30 would come in "substantially below expectations due to slower than expected sales in the month of September": revenue of $1.85 billion to $1.90 billion, and earnings per diluted share, excluding investment gains, of 30 to 33 cents. Wall Street had expected about 45 cents 1213.
Fred Anderson, the chief financial officer, named three causes: a business slowdown in every geography, education sales that fell short of their September peak, and the Power Mac G4 Cube, which was "off to a slower than expected start" 12. Steve Jobs, the chief executive, gave the quarter a phrase the wire services carried: "We've clearly hit a speedbump, which will result in our earning, before investment gains, approximately $110 million rather than the expected $165 million for the September quarter" 12.
The market answered the next morning. Apple's shares had closed at $53.50 on the Thursday and fell to about $29 in after-hours trading straight after the warning, taking more than $7 billion of market value with them 13. On Friday, September 29, the stock fell almost 52% on the Nasdaq, and the Dow Jones industrial average closed down 173.14 points at 10,650.92 14.
What arrived three weeks later, on October 18, matched the warning almost line for line. Apple reported revenue of $1.87 billion and a net profit of $170 million, or 47 cents a share, including a $62 million after-tax gain on the sale of 7.1 million ARM Holdings shares; excluding investment gains, profit was $108 million and earnings 30 cents a share 15. The consequence that lasted longer was the reset. September sell-through had come in "way below plan", Jobs said, leaving an overhang of channel inventory that Apple decided to clear within one quarter instead of several. That decision, he said, "will result in a second disappointing financial quarter". December-quarter revenue was reset to about $1.6 billion, and the target for the 2001 fiscal year to $7.5 billion to $8 billion 15.
Decision mirror: Eighteen years later Apple warned again, and the market took a single day to price it. On January 2, 2019, the company cut its December-quarter revenue guidance to about $84 billion, from the $89 billion to $93 billion it had given on November 1, 2018, and attributed most of the shortfall to Greater China 1617. The shares fell 10% the next day to $142.19, their lowest close since July 2017 and Apple's worst session since January 2013, leaving the company worth less than $700 billion 18.
Three questions for the week
- What does your price assume the customer does next? Amazon put a tablet at $199 and counted on the buyer coming back for content, and Kindle unit sales rose 177% over the holiday period while the Fire became Amazon's best-selling item 13. The same price on a phone, sold through a single carrier, ended in a $170 million charge and $83 million of unsold stock 4.
- How long does your funding assumption stay true? Fortis had a €11.2 billion rescue on a Sunday and was being sold in pieces by the following Friday: €16.8 billion for the Dutch business on October 3, and €14.5 billion to BNP Paribas days later 589. The Dutch state's own count of what it put in reached €66.8 billion 5.
- What does your quarter assume that nobody has checked? Apple's September assumed a peak education season and a new product finding buyers, and the shares halved in a day when September came in low 1214. Eighteen years later the same company missed its own guidance by about $9 billion and fell 10% in a day 161718.
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