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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."
This is just another sad example of the American tendency to live beyond one's means. This is another symptom of the disease that is eating this country: financial illiteracy.
Women are like electronics: you don't know how damaged they are until you try to turn them on.
Nobody ever suggested you could run anything on Windows, and that makes it no different than most of the other OSes out there. It comes down to the simplest of playground rules:
My ball, my game.
There's a reason we're reminded of the 90's and Microsoft vs Netscape. But hey, at least Microsoft didn't stop Netscape from happening, they just competed unfairly. Apple is doing both -- they're bundling Safari (just like Microsoft bundled IE), and they're actively working to prevent Opera from even being sold on that platform.
The only reason I like Macs is that they tend to work. Apple has been more closed and more anticompetitive than Microsoft ever was -- and I'm not just talking about the iPhone.
Don't thank God, thank a doctor!
Opera is free. Apple are preventing a free and arguably better browser from appearing on their gadget. They bigger the market share apple pick up, particularly real people and not apple zealots, the more shit like this is going to come to ahead. Many people already regard apple as the new MS bastards.
$50k/year is considered "low income," now?
Bingo. It's the same reason low-income people drive Beamers, Benzes, etc., especially amongst the low-income African Americans and hispanics. They might be livin' in da hood, but they wear more diamonds than anyone in the 'burbs.
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No, no, no. If I wanted to RTFA I wouldn't be posting on Slashdot. I'm here to make wildly speculative statements on issues on which I have no expertise.
I was asked about Opera not being allowed on the iPhone yesterday. My immediate gut reaction was that Apple was being a douche. All my instincts cry out that programmers should be able to put anything they want out there and let the market decide.
I got to thinking about it though. To the best of my knowledge, there is no global preference in place to set which apps respond to which data sources. What I mean is, when I click on a link in an email, Safari opens the page. When I click on a phone number in google maps, an email or a web page, the phone app opens it. Same thing for music, podcasts, videos, etc. You get the idea.
This keeps the phone simple, intuitive and predictable. All the other apps I install are all for doing some *other* specific task than what is provided by the core applications/functionality. What would happen then if I loaded Opera, Konqueror, Firefox, etc. on the phone. Which one would open my web links? Obviously the one specified in my preferences (which don't exist). What if I wanted to open this particular link with FireFox this time? I can't right-click and say open link with. Do I have to quit the program, open preferences and temporarily select Firefox?
I realize that it would be rather simple for Apple to address these issues and add this functionality, but once that camel's nose is under the tent you are now dealing with people demanding a preference and underlying mechanism for modifying the behavior of all the core functionalities. I want Skype to open when I touch a phone number in an email or on a web page (or in my address book), but I only want it to come up when I'm not connected to wireless. When I'm on wireless I want MyVOIP to make the calls. This also applies to which app you want sending emails, text messages, etc.
While the geek in me can get into this sort of configurability, I've already seen the whole other level of complexity added to the preference system with just the addition of push and Exchange connectivity. If users had to go through page after page of preferences just to find the right place to indicate which app they wanted to store their contacts in and have that tie into their Exchange push connection, it would be a nightmare.
I don't think the masses are ready for that or even really want it. That sort of complexity will make the iPhone just like every other smart phone out there. My coworker was bragging up his WinMobile-based smartphone at lunch the other day. He was saying it could do so much more than the iPhone. I don't doubt it, but my god, the gyrations he had to go through to tweak a setting to get it to do things. Just setting up a new wireless connection or a new IMAP email account seemed ridiculously complex. He said it was just due to the fact that he'd downloaded other email apps and tools and that each one had a different place to set up some of the preferences.
Is there a place for a mobile device that lets a geek configure every possible thing and choose exactly which software performed what tasks? Absolutely. That place should rightly be filled by Android and matched with the particular hardware design that that geek has chosen for their particular needs/fetish. I don't think the iPhone is where it belongs.
It may be the height of irony but I can see the iPhone becoming the phone people refer to when they say "Dammit, all I want in my smart-phone is to be able to make calls, surf the web, email, mapping, music, games and movies! I don't want to have to mess with all that other crap." in the same way purists today say "I just want a phone that makes calls."
"terrorism" and "pedophilia" are the root passwords to the Constitution
'Black' is not a skin color, it's a state of mind. I grew up in Detroit -- the "D".
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I had no problem eating well when I was a poor college student. For me it was easier to eat well when I was poor because all the pre-made frozen/boxed/canned meals were unaffordable. Now I have to work quite a bit harder to avoid the temptation to simply let Tombstone and friends do all my cooking for me.
The poor people I know who eat like crap don't do it because they can't afford better. They do it because they have no willpower. They not only eat junk food, they eat out for junk food. Nobody who can afford to eat regularly at McDonald's is going to have problems affording healthy food.
And really, I don't buy your argument at all. Eating healthy is harder if you're a lazy poor person. But potatoes, beans, and in-season vegetables are all cheaper than junk food.
Oh, and food stamps? I don't live in an area with a lot of food-stamp recipients. But the last time I saw someone use food stamps at my local grocery store, she was buying two large bottles of Odwalla juice, clocking in at something like $15 total for perhaps half a gallon of juice. Obviously she's having no trouble affording healthy food!
If you mod me Overrated, you are admitting that you have no penis.
I have a job, I work as a PA to the disabled. I made less than $16000 last year. Do you know why it pays so low? Because the majority of people who do it in the cities are african american women. And thusly the work is devalued.
No. The pay is so low because there's a greater supply of would-be PAs there there is a demand for them. Contrast with, say, an accountant: it's hard to become one, so the supply stays relatively low and they get more pay.
Drop the wanna-be victim crap. You chose to work in a low-skill job and can't expect to get paid a lot for it. I won't bother replying to your failed logic tying lesbians to social work.
Dewey, what part of this looks like authorities should be involved?