Slashdot Mirror
Low-Income Users Latch On To iPhone
narramissic writes "The iPhone crowd is still dominated by affluent males between the ages of 18 and 35, but in a series of surveys ending in August, ComScore found that iPhone purchases grew fastest among people with annual household incomes between $25,000 and $50,000. The growth rate in this group was 48 percent, compared with just 16 percent among people with incomes above $100,000. And the down economy isn't going to turn this trend around, says ComScore Mobile analyst Jen Wu. 'I don't see there's going to be much of a slowdown, just because wireless devices are so much more of a necessity than they used to be,' Wu said."
In other iPhone news, an anonymous reader points out a NYTimes story about the rise in car-related applications and uses for the iPhone, which points out that programmers are just beginning to "appreciate just what can be done with an iPhone and other advanced cellphones that know where they are and just how quickly they are going someplace else." Another iPhone story mentions that "Opera's engineers have developed a version of Opera Mini that can run on an Apple iPhone, but Apple won't let the company release it because it competes with Apple's own Safari browser."
Say I have a Linksys router, one which won't allow openWRT/DD-WRT to run on it. Does this also warrant an antitrust lawsuit?
Since when is making 50k a year low income?
What could do what I say? Ah yes, that's it, the Fair Tax - taxing consumption instead of savings and earning as the current ridiculous system does.
Well, don't come whining to me if your government introduces such a tax, and you end up worse off - just like everyone else has under such a taxation system. I speak from comparatively recent experience since a consumption tax was introduced here in Australia in 2000 and the effect on most household purses was almost immediate.
Sure, if you can show me a government that is prepared to stop slugging you for income tax as well, your suggestion might (possibly) stand up, but good luck with that.
That aside, your remark that Poor people are poor because they're stupid with their money has to be one of the more repugnant statements I have read on Slashdot in quite a while, and is symptomatic of what is wrong with the attitude of our administrations. Sometimes people are poor because of the hand they have been dealt.
This story concurs with my own observation; I take the Broad Street line in Philly from Center City and go pretty far north every day; there are many apparently low-income people with iPhones and iPod Touches. It actually amazes me.
But unlike the article, I never thought the iPhone/Touch were chosen based on frugality; rather, I think they are status symbols, vulgar displays of wealth like knock-off designer clothes and cheap bling. There are much cheaper devices, or combination of devices, available.
The article is more like industrial cheer-leading, which apparently concludes that the iPhone has become a necessity. Please!
Normally, I'd wait for a non-AC to make the point, but since you're probably going to get modded up, I'll just have to snuff it out right here:
Are you retiring in the next year to two? If not, them you have nothing to worry about.
Right, because I wasn't planning on using the money in my savings account until I turn 65, is that it?
Okay, so let's just look at the "long-term" savings accounts. Given the recent downturn and the still-pathetic earnings yields, the stock market over -- yes, the long term -- will probably return 5% nominal, since it first has to make up the ~40% downturn. (The 10-year S&P fund return was 4.5%/year *before* the recent downturn, and even that isn't enough to cover the taxes+inflation+volatility. Even in a tax-advantaged account, that's not a good deal.)
So, in exchange for giving up most of my wealth when it's most valuable to me (at a young age), I get to have a whopping 1% inflation/tax/volatility-adjusted return by investing till 65.
If your personal time discount rate is more than 1% -- which it is for almost everyone -- it just doesn't make sense to save, I am now sadly forced to admit. So frankly, I can't really criticize people who took advantage of way-underprice interested rates to buy durable consumer items. Show me risk-free interest rates (money markets) of 8% real, and I will change my mind.
Btw, anyone notice how the reasoning I'm responding to is sounding more and more these days like, "oh, don't worry man, the roulette wheel can be kinda mean, just keep playing, you'll make up your losses, totally, the guys in suits have it all figured out."
Now before you get really down on the system, keep in mind, you'd be worse off (less money, less control, watching much of your money paying for shit you don't want, and money going to the politicians' buddies) if the Government took care of everything for you.
Relevance to what I actually posted, please?
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
I thought the same thing (minuscule market share), until I saw that in Q4 2007, the iPhone had a 30% market share of smartphones.
It's since dropped, but I have no idea what's happened since the 3G model came out. Point is...it's not remotely minuscule; they're second or third.
The other point: the market is pretty diversified between Palm, Windows Smartphones, Palm OS, Symbian, and others (like the Sidekick, running Hiptop OS.) If several companies colluded and blocked Opera, THAT would be an anti-trust action.
Please help metamoderate.
Amen.
I heard an Ad Council ad on the radio a few years ago that dramatized a "Savers Anonymous" meeting.
"Hello, my name is Dave... and... I drive a car... that's SEVEN YEARS OLD!!! (*sob*)"
"Hi, I'm Dana, and last week... I couldn't help myself! I CLIPPED A COUPON!"
Etc.
The whole point was that in this world it is almost politically incorrect to be financially responsible.
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
Perhaps they don't have all of the costs you describe because they live within their means. $25k per year is over $2k per month. In my case, for example, I make $1900 per month, spend $850 on {mortgage, utilities, property taxes, maintenance} (I live in an expensive area), $400 on food, nothing on a car, nothing on gas, nothing on tuition, next to nothing on clothes, and minimal amounts on entertainment.
Which means each month of my $1900, I have $650 of overhead that either goes to savings, or electronics projects.
We don't all have your expenses. If I wanted to afford $70/month for a phone (I already pay $30/month for just a regular cell phone, so only a $40/month marginal increase, btw).
Sorry, but technology doesn't always make life easier; don't need fluff I won't use.
"jPhone" or iPhone shuffle??
1 button phone: answer/hangup; hold for power
1 slide switch: silent mode; during conversation it turns on speaker mode
Voice recognition: RECITE numbers to dial them
Speaking interface: like voice mail menus- I never want to mess with options so its no big deal to wait for a talking interface whenever I want to setup speed dial or see the last call's number (it does have a tiny screen.)
simple ring sound; if custom just have it record your own with it's mic
Water resistant: sound quality often sucks anyhow
Simple small B&W display; wrist watch like; callerID
2 AAA NiMH batteries: new batteries shouldn't cost more than the phone! (I don't care if I have to swap batteries it doesn't have to charge them; I'm not that lazy...) /. is the wrong place to talk simple but I'm shocked nobody has made a phone that doesn't go in this direction.
At least this is more Star Trek: push button, speak name of person to speak to - and it calls them; perhaps using other people's tracking info you can ask it where somebody is and have it speak an answer as well? It could speak their name when they call (known people only.)
Democracy Now! - uncensored, anti-establishment news
I live in a neighbourhood which is rapidly gentrifying - So you have a mix of 'poor' people, middle class and upper-middle class. It's interesting to look at the houses when I walk my dog in the evening - The houses which would be branded as 'poor' - Junk in the yard, unmowed lawn, shabby house, almost always have a 50" flatscreen glowing away in the front room, showing hockey in high-def. Then I go home to my ten year old 28" CRT television with analog cable.
It's "low" to your average tech geek.
Think about your average tech geek, they're white or asian, they grew up on the suburbs. maybe their dad got them a shell account on their workplaces Unix box, maybe they got a neo geo when they were kids. Their high school had a math team and a library right out of Shermer High School, they had an IBM PC when the things were $2000+. They could afford to take SAT/ACT preperation courses, their school had classes to prepare them to take the AP tests AND they could afford to take AP tests, thus effectively paying LESS for an education than poorer folks who couldn't afford to take AP tests. By the time they hit college, they were effectively years ahead of the poorer kids. Then they got jobs, maybe for a tech/gaming magazine or working for some company. They make good money, they can afford tons of tech toys, they upgrade their gaming box every 6 months. And they don't realize how privileged they were/are.
Replace "Linksys router" with "TiVo" and "openWRT/DD-WRT" with "modified software for TiVos" and then you'll have a good argument.
(Also replace "antitrust lawsuit" with "GPL violation (a.k.a. copyright infringement) lawsuit" in both cases.)
"[Regarding the 'cloud,'] ownership was what made America different than Russia." -- Woz
Well I for one make pretty close to $100k and I can not imagine spending several hundred dollars on an iphone, nor the $70 a month cost for the service. But yes, pretty much half the people in my office have one, and they take delight in pointing out how they have one by complaining about how it won't stay synced with Outlook or how it is difficult to view such and such webpage on their iphone (though it would probably be easy to view it on their 21" monitor right in front of them. And of course, since they have all this texting and e-mailing and other automated junk sending to their phone, important e-mails occasionally slip through the cracks, but no more than a couple of times a day.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
You're right.
The iPhone platform is closed, Windows Mobile is much more open. The arbitrary way that Apple get to pick and choose really sucks.
However, iPhone wipes the floor with Windows Mobile on usability. Some slashdotters value openness more, some value UI more and are willing to overlook Apple's behaviour so far.
The poor whites I know don't go in for diamonds and necklaces. They go in for personal watercraft, big pickups, dirtbikes, recreational vehicles and such.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Agree! I've made similar statements here on /., but seem to draw angry responses from many Mac users that think Apple never does any harm. We keep getting discussion like this one and yet people still look at Apple as their saviour.
Can you imagine if Apple were as big as MS? Almost everything they do would bring lawsuits against them. They don't allow competition on so many levels. Sure they have good hardware and software, but that ONLY comes through there tight control of both hardware and software. Would they open there OS to run on anything and allow you to download all kinds of junk and run it, I bet you would find Macs crashing left and right...driver conflicts, software conflicts, you name it. I would also bet that if MS had only 10 versions of PC's that they tested and sold with their OS (and nobody else could make a PC), it would probably run much, much better. Far fewer drivers. Not many hardware options to cause conflict. Much easier to bench test. As it is, MS has to test as many configurations as possible, but still manufacturers in China make some cheap hardware and drivers and get them installed on a no-name PC. Now you have a scenario MS never tested for and problems come in.
Apple's got it easy, but they are monopolistic like MS has never been.
jsut athnoer menagiensls ltitle psrhae for you to dcoede. Why do we wtsae our tmie dnoig tihs?
Umm, no.... The point is, if a person can afford to spend $60 for a console game, then they can obviously afford prices like 99 cents or even $4.99 for a piece of phone software.
My iPhone purchase was never about it being a "status symbol". I simply have owned several "smartphones" in the past, because I like the idea of my cellphone also being capable of doing web browsing and checking my email on the go. I don't need to see some full-blown "Flash enabled" web site. But I might want to look up info on a restaurant or hotel before I go there, see what current online pricing is on something before I buy it locally, etc. The iPhone BLOWS AWAY the older phones I used, some of which I paid more than my iPhone for when they were new. Treo 650, Treo 600, Kyocera 7135, etc. etc.
Well, that makes two of us, then. I also make about $100k/yr and couldn't imagine coughing up hundreds for an iPhone. My 3 year old Razr works just fine, and it was almost free (well, completely subsidized) because I signed up for a 2 year contract (smallest they offered, but still way more minutes than I ever use) at something like $24/month.
For that matter, I also drive a 15 year old car every day (which I do nearly all the work on myself, and now has about 350k miles on it - that said, I have two newer ones - 2004 and 2007 - in the garage at home that mostly sit), have a modest (2000 sq ft) 35 year old house in a working class neighborhood, put away a huge stash of cash of retirement every year, and have absolutely no debt aside from about $70k left on the mortgage. I don't throw money around for appearances - it's not necessary for my career, and if I am going to spend serious cash, it's going to be on something that has pragmatic value in my life. I live simply and within my means - something that befuddles most Americans these days.
And honestly, it pisses me off in the pit of my stomach that you somehow feel privileged enough to get to critique a poor person's purchasing decision just because you make more. But I understand it is ignorance.
Well then you have misinterpreted me. I'm not criticizing a poor person's purchasing decision just because I make more. I would criticize anyone who buys two jugs of Odwalla juice at $7+ each. It's a dumb decision made by dumb people. But in this case not only is it dumb but she demonstrably cannot afford it. And she is using my money, and the money of all other local taxpayers, to fund this rather ridiculous luxury.
My main point being, food stamps obviously help people out a lot. Eating right is cheaper than eating junk food, so the argument that people on food stamps can't afford to eat right is junk. And if people are doing well enough on food stamps to buy gourmet juice, then the argument is really junk.
You're perfectly correct that everyone makes mistakes and goes on unnecessary splurges. And you're perfectly correct that poor people have far less margin for error. But that's precisely why they should regulate themselves much more carefully. Sure, it's only human to screw up. But when your income is sufficient to eat well and healthily but you can't because you instead spend your money on McDonald's and fancy juices and Doritos, well you certainly can't blame society for your failings.
In the end it's about responsibility. Do humans screw up? Sure. But that doesn't mean you can just go off and blame other people for your screwups.
I imagine there are plenty of poor people who are able to control themselves well enough to avoid buying ridiculously expensive juice. There are plenty of poor people out there who work hard, spend frugally, and live as well as they can in their circumstances. Honestly I think it's an insult to those folk to talk about them as being in the same situation as a person who uses government food support to buy vastly overpriced luxury items.
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
We're talking about Apple's rejection of applications which are deemed to "compete" with Apple's own functionality, or even planned functionality. Here's a (probably incomplete) list of higher profile apps that have been rejected by Apple, for various reasons.
Regarding Opera's rejection -- if Microsoft could have locked users into using only Internet Explorer on Windows, they would have. Once IE had killed Netscape, most internet-savvy people were even okay with using IE. Just because most of us are okay with Apple, and Safari doesn't suck, doesn't mean that Apple is justified in locking its users into its choice of software.
Don't blame me -- I voted for Roslin.
and why is it ok for Apple to reject an app because they were working on something similar themselves? Or because an app was more functional (for some users) than the built-in app? Both cases are as evil as denying Opera's browser, all worthy of antitrust investigation. This is about choice and I would prefer to decide which app works best for me rather than Apple making that decision, thank you very much comrade.
Yes, I own an iphone and love it, even though I am growing irritated that I can't use TCPMP to watch flv, avi, mpg2, etc. When the bar of irritation reaches a certain level then I will likely jailbreak.
Mike O, KT2T