Last week, Apple (Nasdaq: AAPL) finally responded to "Antenna-gate." In typical Apple fashion, its message was anything but conventional. In the video below, Fool.com analyst Eric Bleeker talks about Apple's reaction to the ongoing controversy over the iPhone 4's bad habit of losing reception when it's held a certain way. You'll find a summary of Bleeker’s thoughts below the video.

Jobs came out swinging, blaming the media for targeting Apple because of its size and success. To a degree, Bleeker believes that's true. Apple is a hot story right now; people rabidly follow the company. However, Steve Jobs needs to take responsibility for Apple's reaction to the issue. When users complain about potential design flaws, he shouldn't tell them to simply "hold the phone another way" or give a lame software excuse. If Apple's PR hadn't been so prickly from day one, this issue wouldn't have grown so prominent.

Bleeker does believe Apple's insistence that the issue isn't as important as critics have claimed, but he considers this event a blown public-relations opportunity from day one. However, now Apple has given Nokia (NYSE: NOK) a chance to take potshots at the iPhone, while Motorola (NYSE: MOT) and Research in Motion (Nasdaq: RIMM) both fire back at Jobs' accusations that their phones have the same signal loss. By calling out other companies, Apple is only extending the media cycle around this issue.

Bleeker doesn't think "Antennagate" will cause any permanent damage. Still, Apple needs to learn from it. In the future, Jobs should be a bit more conciliatory right off the bat. Maybe Apple should consider that it's not being targeted because it's so big, but because it has acted so arrogantly.

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