The scenario you give with the iPhone may have been planned marketing as well. It's not that hard to conclude that a $600 dollar cell phone would not sell very well when the iPhone debuted. But releasing it at that price made it "exclusive", creating a lot of consumer desire for the device, then they dropped the price to where people could afford it. So they cashed in on that seed they planted and received a lot of additional news coverage from the price drop.

Apple has teams of people working through this stuff. So while you may be right that it was just a prepared backup plan, it also could've been the plan to begin with.