Slashdot Mirror
Consumers Unlikely To Pay $500 for iPhone
narramissic writes "A survey by online market research firm Compete Inc. finds that of the 26% of those who said they're likely to buy an iPhone, only 1% said they'd pay $500 for it, while 42% said they'd likely buy the phone for $200 to $299. Sixty percent of likely iPhone buyers would be willing to make the switch to AT&T wireless to get it."
I can't begin to count how often in the past people cheered about a product that ended up either vaporware or less-than-desired. I also can't begin to count on the opposite happening: a non-starter product release that turned out to be better than expected. I've been a PDA user since the Apple Newton days, and I've been a PDA Phone user since pre-Blackberry days (although I never had a Blackberry, I prefer full PDAs). I currently use an HTC Trinity P3600 and love it -- GPS, EDGE/3G, 2GB storage card, WiFi, and more. It runs the horrid Windows Mobile 5 but I absolutely love the phone, and combined with Google Maps online + GPS, it replaced 3 devices that I had tethered with me constantly.
The iPhone looks terrible to me for a variety of reasons -- locked application support, AT&T (love my T-Mobile), restrictive networking (GPRS and not EDGE/3G?), etc. But the iPhone will probably win in version 2 because of what has made Apple a powerhouse -- it's the interface, stupid. My iPod is really a great device (even though I don't use it since I have EDGE-radio streamed from my home media PC). I loved the iPod for the interface. I'm glad my wife, sister, father, mother and brother all have iPods -- I have to do absolutely NO work to keep them happy.
My #1 complaint about ALL PDAs and ALL phones has always been the interface. It seems that techies designed a horrid interface around features, rather than integrating everything into a smooth GUI. Apple's interface alone will sell millions, and people will pay the price.
One thing that people seem to forget time and again is that you can not judge tomorrow's prices on yesterday's prices. Inflation has destroyed the US dollar (down 50% in 5 years), so prices double of what we paid 5 years ago can be considered "par" with the fall in value of the dollar. I think $500 is a reasonable price for all of what the iPhone offers -- even though it is merely version 1.0. By the time the iPhone is actually released, who knows how much inflation has caused wages to "rise" and incomes to "soar." With the Democrats taking over, I don't doubt that inflation will get worse than even the high-spending Republicans forced the issue.
Don't look at prices as a constant. In terms of US dollars, we're almost all wealthier in the number of dollars we earn -- even though we are poorer in terms of what those dollars can buy us.
Sidenote: Apple is also wise to set this price point. It is just pricey-enough-sounding to make the device a little more elitist than the $49 Razr that every 12 year old seems to have. Getting the superstars and Paris-Hilton-models using their phone will make everyone want one, and as sales go up, prices tend to go down. Apple's biggest problem in the short run will be supply -- I guarantee they won't have enough to keep up with demand, even at $500.
I paid $650 for my HTC Trinity P3600, and if Apple can integrate a GPS and EDGE/3G, I'd pay $1000 for it just on the interface alone. Give it a few weeks after release, and I think people's opinions of the device will change. They'll see what it can do for them (especially business folks, teenagers with money, and young adults with new credit cards), and they'll jump at the chance to have one early for $500.
Oh sorry, I thought we were talking about the PS3.
God spoke to me.
Consumers Unlikely To Pay $500 for iPhone
I hear it's also got less space than a Nomad. Lame.
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
Not that I disagree with the assessment that nobody wants a $500 phone, but does anyone else really doubt how accurate these online marketing surveys are? To qualify (and get paid) you usually have to answer a question like the following one from a survey to gather information about enterprise class printers:
How many people work in your company worldwide?
- 1
- 2-5
- 6-15
- 16-100
- 101-10000
Well, you know that if you don't answer with the last one, you don't get to participate or get paid. You know that people lie their asses off.Possibly. I am going to get it (eventually), but I make above-average money and have no kids or anything. I think most consumers expect it to drop in price like other cell phones, IE the razr which was once rediculously priced but now is handed out willy-nilly. Whether that happens or not is yet to be seen, since Apple has no intention of being a typical mobile phone manufacturer.
46% of potential Ferrari buyers said they would buy a Ferrari for $12,000-$18,000. Less than one percent said they would buy a Ferrari for the current list price of $1,000,000.
Avoid Missing Ball for High Score
So only 1% would purchase it at $500, but a full 60% would switch to Cingular to get it. At what price would they switch? $299 or $499? Summary doesn't say, nor does TFA.
Sloppy.
Per Square Mile, a blog about density
Personally, after the initial excitement wore off, I decided to wait to see if OpenMoko's phone is going to be all it seems it could be. Apple lost me when they took a perfectly good computing device and made it phone+music player with some PDA functions tacked. Go ahead an mod me troll, but I've got a stack of apple laptops. I buy stuff for its value and Apple's stuff often packs good value. Not the iPhone though -- I don't see the value there.
What changed under Obama? Nothing Good
Yeah, you'd better run!
Dollars to donuts, people will pay for the iPhone.
They said the original iPod was expensive, too. But there's are segments of society that won't flinch at $500 for a phone because it's not much money to them. And there are other segments of society that are willing to invest $500 of their hard earned money into something they really like.
The iPhone may be expensive for a "phone" -- but as a pocket computer, it's a pretty cool device. These nay-sayers are the same people shelling out thousands of dollars for HD TVs, and I paid $2000 for my iMac a while ago -- in the grand scheme of things, $500 is not that much money.
iPhone will sell like hot cakes and make Apple a tonne of dough.
Inflation has destroyed the US dollar (down 50% in 5 years), so prices double of what we paid 5 years ago can be considered "par" with the fall in value of the dollar.
If you consider inflation to be the value of precious metals such as gold, then sure, you can get to absurd values such as 50% (mind you, there's no such thing as absolute reference value). OTOH, if you consider consumer price indexes, it's much lower - between 5 and 10%.
The Raven
I seem to recall that Steve Jobs said when introducing the iPhone that they were aiming for 1% of the market initially.
The survey is backwards. It asks first if the person is interested in the iPhone _and then_ what price they'll pay. Apple has already said they aren't targeting every phone buyer. They're targeting phone buyers who are planning on/willing to spend $500+ on a phone. They don't (currently) care about the people who want an iPhone but are only willing to spend $200 (or whatever price).
I'd be more interested in what percentage of people who are willing to buy a $500+ phone are planning on getting an iPhone.
(And I'm going to skip the obvious commentary about wanting an iPhone but being "willing" to buy it for as cheap a price as the survey allows because many others are already making those (insightful) comments...)
We are not consumers! We are citizens and customers, not sheep.
Of course it runs NetBSD. BTC: 1NT7QvbetmANwaMzhpVL6
So basically, one person their entire sample was willing to pay the iPhone's nominal, current price? That's a pretty shoddy sample to be deducing the actual percent from.
Also, note that just because the majority of people won't buy a particular product, it does not follow that the product will necessarily fail. What percent of Americans owned iPods when they first came out? It's up to around 10% now, but we're also into the fifth generation and the prices have dropped while capability has increased. Since this is common with technology, I would expect the same from the iPhone.
Why are you attacking the poster? He's making cogent points in a very clear way. If you don't agree with hm, fine, but your personal attack is off-base and stupid. You're just revealing that you're too shallow to use reason to oppose what you obviously disagree with. You're making his argument look even stronger by comparison.
David
Do I personally despise Apple? yes.
You'd feel different if you had a job.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
You are a sad man, period. "They've all been overpriced, underpowered, poorly designed crap." Really, is that why they have been winning award FOR design, and are quoted numerous times as being cost effective and high powered? Go read PC World, or some other rags for the real info.
If you are listening to Enderle or Thurrot, I can see why your head is up your ass.
It's either on the beat or off the beat, it's that easy.
I moderate therefore I rule!
--
Here in the US, as opposed to say Japan or the EU, we pay for our $500 cell phones in multi-year contracts for phone services, so we actually think it costs us $50 for a phone, since it's bundled with our overpriced service.
In other places you pay the actual price of the phone and your wireless service is $10 to $20 a month.
The same thing will happen with the iPhone - US and Canadian customers will be offered a plan where we basically amortize the cost of the iPhone over 2 or 3 years of wireless service, and end up paying much more than we would if we kept it separate.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
The author surveyed 379 people of which 26% said they will buy iPhone. That is roughly 100 people, of which 1% said they will pay $500. That is just 1 person. Whoever translates this to 1% is a "statistically challenged" person.
Why is 500 for the iPhone too much, when its 450 for the Motorola Q and its a terrible phone that people still buy?
"Slashdot, where telling the truth is overrated but lying is insightful."
Jesus Christ! The word is reins. Reign is what a ruler does over something. Reins are what you guide a horse with.
If you don't understand a word, don't use it.
All? Modern macbook is a great mid-level machine. iPod is quite good for a DRM-enabled player. Original Mac was monochrome, but it did graphics while IBM-clones were still just doing text for the most part. iMac was a success by any standard. The iPhone is the only potential boondoggle in your list. If you had talked about Newtons (Priced WAY over what the market would bear) then maybe you would have a point.
Now, I will happily agree that any Mac from the Macintosh II line forward, up until they went to the intel chips, is overpriced and underpowered. The G4 was the fastest thing around for about a second but it always had a horrible price:performance ratio. But your generalizations are inaccurate.
Yes! Give in to the dark side!
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
You know, reading posts like this makes me want to go to the Apple Store and buy something. There seems to be a correlation between people who can't shut up about how much they hate Apple and people who repeatedly make completely absurd posts with a deficient vocabulary.
Seriously, I'll pay a lot of money just to not be like you.
I have seen the future, and it is inconvenient.
And widescreen video iPod to boot! The $500-600 price point is right where I expect it to be, as I was pricing new high-end Palm compatibles a few years ago, and the nice Sony ones (when they still made them) were all BT/WiFi/widescreen and/or twistscreen and guess what? Priced at $500-$700 for the really nice ones with the better screens and networking. The "unopen" aspect of the iPhone environment bothers me a bit, I'd rather have something open like Palm, but I'm also thinking of making the purchase; 1) I'm already on AT&Cingular, 2) my contract ends on my RAZR in April, 3) I've been waiting for the widescreen video iPod already ('bout damn time, I'd say), 3) the RAZR is okay, but it suffers greatly from a poorly designed UI and way too little user memory, 4) I believe it might become a more open platform in the future (however, I have next to nothing to base this on).
Good enough for me, but then I'm not the typical Walmart shopping, late adopter type waiting for the price to drop to ~$300.
This is the NSA, we're gonna geet U h@x0r5! Also, what is a h@x0r5?
Or, rather, my wife is getting one.
Her birthday is in June, and she needs a new iPod and a new cell phone, and we're already with Cingular and are happy with the service. She saw that you can show pictures to people on that wide screen and said "I want to be able to do that." And now that we've got a baby on the way, it will make it a helluva lot easier than having to lug photos around or view it on my iPod's comparatively small screen, or the tiny screen of an iPod Nano. And having her address book and calendar with her would be very convenient.
So it's not for everybody, but for her it can replace having to carry around two larger items that, were I to buy them separately, would cost about the same price.
I'm in the hole of the broadband donut.
A hair less than those who said they wouldn't buy an MP3 player for $400 when the 1st generation iPod was released.
Prof. Farnsworth - "Oh a lesson in not changing history from Mr I'm-My-Own-Grandpa!"
"Apple launches the iPhone, aiming for one percent of the global mobile market." - 1/10/2007
Study: Consumers aren't willing to pay $500 for iPhone "only 1 percent said they'd pay US$500 for it" - 2/23/2007
Wow. In only six weeks they've managed to estabilish exactly what Apple already said and, in a sensationalist bid, are framing exactly what was predicted as a terrible failure.
As another poster's written: Most people would buy Ferraris for $18,000 but less than 1% will at their current price... and Ferrari is absolutely fine with that.
In exactly the same way, Apple created a flagship brand that's not supposed to be owned by everyone but is supposed to increase brand awareness, move more people to iTunes and sell a hell of a lot of iPods to people who'd like to be able to upgrade "one day." Apple doesn't want the $50, minimal to no profits, tied to carriers for subsidies market. They chose their market, went after it, and all this article does is confirm their estimates were apparently exactly right. Given most companies over-estimate, 0.5% would have been a more realistic expectation based on a 1% prediction. That independent research supports 1% too is the shocking part.
Don't mention your UID as a basis for any statement on /. unless it's lower than 100000. Ever.
Slashdot. It's Not For Common Sense
There's nothing hypocritical about it. The first is an interface designed for use on a desktop computer, the latter is for use on a mobile phone - a device which has a fraction of the screen size and whose screen also doubles as the primary input device. The interface for such a device will inherently be more simplistic, which isn't necessarily a limitation in this case, since a mobile phone is only required to perform a more limited set of functions. High-contrast interfaces go a long way to overcoming glare and make it easier to identify icons at a glance so it just makes sense. You also misunderstand the criticism towards XP, the criticism isnt so much that people dont like the blue/green theme, the criticism is leveled at the idea that the business of good interface design is only the application of a theme when in fact its about the judicious, and more importantly, consistent use of interface principles that actually make tasks easier to accomplish. Microsoft thought if it draped its turd in blue and green it could pass it off as an intuitive interface.
No, you are projecting your preferences as absolutes. Do you go into a nice Italian restaurant and then claim that they are the worst restaurant ever because they don't have dim sum? My guess is you don't, because if you want dim sum then go to a Chinese place. It's the same here. Apple doesn't make something you want, thats fine. However, since neither you, me, or any other individual are not the end all be all judges of quality, the fact that you don't like Apple products really doesn't say ANYTHING about Apples products other than they don't appeal to you. If you think any differently then you really need to wake up and realize that not everyone has the same set of priorities as you do.
Monstar L
If they drop the price that low, it'll put the iPhone into direct competition with the high-end iPod (currently $350). Since the iPhone has more features, a cheap iPhone has the potential to cannibalize iPod sales. That's no good for Apple because lowering the price means lowering the iPhone's profit margin at the expense of high profit iPods.
All signs indicate Apple's trying to position the iPhone a step-up from the iPod, not a replacement. I really doubt it will ever drop below the price of the most expensive iPod, even with a contract.
It ISN'T an OSX handheld computer.
In order to be a computer, one would need to be able to install/develop software on/for it.
Instead, it is just a toy.
+++ATH0
I've got this great commercial post blocker software. It will block not just dada21, but dada1-20 as well! $19.99, but for the first 100 slashbots to order, it's only $9.99! Just mention the code "IMADUFUS" for your special deal.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
You can't even buy a PC laptop for the same price with the same specs. Actually, I think if you spec out a similar PC laptop, it costs MORE. And it is durable, and the industrial design is excellent.
Your complaints about Macs used to be valid. I used to have the same complaints. Wake up -- they don't apply anymore.
+++ATH0
I don't know where you get this idea that Cingular is run by bumpkins but it's not my experience. I travel throughout the midwest (usually driving) and I've had very few problems, no more than I had while using my old Verizon account or my work-purchased SprintNextel phone. In fact, in my experience, the Sprint network is the worst.
As soon as it's out, I'm buying it. Heck, I'm even getting the $600 one with more memory. I'm sick of crappy phones and I'm willing to pay to bet on apple. They haven't failed me yet.
It's $500 with a 2 year contract. Until we know what's IN that contract, it's ridiculous to make any purchasing decision. If it's $500 for unlimited calls and data then more than 1% will want it, if it's $5/min + $5/kB then nodody will.
A pizza of radius z and thickness a has a volume of pi z z a
What's your status you fucking punk?
Yeah, all the most successful people are as defensive as you are, I'm sure..
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
You have to respect someone for their opinion to count.
That would be why people tend to dismiss you, of course.
But, it's good that you have assilimated this fact. For homework, try to figure out why people don't respect you. Better yet, talk it over with a good therapist.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Ok so they are behind a bit, Their page says that they are shipping this month. Unlikely, but I'll buy one of these before I'd ever buy an iPhone. If they do all the things they say they will do this phone will kick Apple's ass. The phone is called "Neo 1973" what that means I don't know.
l
This presentation isn't as flashy as Steve Jobs' but is has me way more interested.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jRvtAAXTIlg
Linux Devices has a good writeup.
http://www.linuxdevices.com/news/NS2986976174.htm
The Company Web Site
http://www.openmoko.com/
"It's because they're stupid, that's why. That's why everybody does everything." -Homer Simpson
iPod prices are lower now than they were when the device launched. It's probably even more dramatic if you adjust for inflation. If there's one thing you can count on in consumer electronics, it's falling prices.
I think it's very possible we'll see a $300 iPhone in a few years. Either the best iPod will cost well under $300, or the iPhone WILL be the best iPod--in much the same way the Treo is the top-of-the-line Palm PDA these days.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
You totally underestimate how much of the market dislikes all exisitng smartphone options and will be happy to snap up an iPhone.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
jealous?
Of many people, certainly. Of you, not a chance.
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
They invented an awesome new feature which is currently unheard of in cell phones: the "it doesn't suck" feature.