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Android Phone Demand Up 250%, iPhone Down
CWmike writes "A 'monstrous' jump in demand for Android-equipped smartphones has turned the market upside down, according to a retail pollster. Of the people who told ChangeWave Research in a mid-December survey that they planned to buy a smartphone in the next 90 days, 21% said they expected to purchase an Android phone. That number represented a 250% increase over the 6% that pegged Android as their mobile OS of choice when ChangeWave last queried consumers' plans in September. 'That change rivals anything that we've seen in the last three years of the smartphone market,' said Paul Carton, ChangeWave's director of research, adding that the sudden surge in consumer interest in Android had 'roiled' the market. 'This is an indication that Android has finally caught consumer interest,' added Carton, who cited the recent advertising campaign for the Motorola Droid smartphone as the reason why interest in Android has skyrocketed. Android's leap translated into good news for Motorola and HTC, the most prominent makers of Google-powered handsets, with the former reaping most of the benefit. Motorola's share of smartphone purchases in the next 90 days shot up from 1% in September to 13% in December. Carton tagged the company's Droid as the reason. '[It's] the first increase for Motorola we've seen in three years,' Carton said." Here is the ChangeWave report.
Yes... share growth is a useless metric for a new offering. Whats 350% of nothing? Still nothing. How about giving us the market share instead.
Notice that this wasn't a report of 250% sales growth... it was a report of 250% increase in a poll asking "What cell phone do you PLAN to buy?"... not quite the same thing.
So, why isn't the story about sales growth rather than the survey?
Maybe Apple will finally get it through their heads and open up the iPhone for real development...
Oh gawd, when are people going to get it. Just because it's important to you does not mean it's important to 99.99% of the other people out there. Hell, I'm a geek and it isn't important to me. Most people don't give a rat's ass about the iPhone not being an open platform. Hell, a vast, significant majority of people don't even know what an open platform is...
Probably, because that's what "demand" implies?
Maybe, but while opinion surveys can be interesting, they aren't very good indicators of actual behavior. If I asked 4,000 people whether they planned to buy a second Bible in the next 90 days -- for their children -- I bet a lot of people would answer yes. How many of them would actually go out and do it?
Part of "demand" in the economics sense is not just wanting something, but willingness to pay for something. It doesn't matter what people say; if nobody is actually buying a product, there's no demand.
It's also extremely important to understand the sampling method in a study like this (which is probably why so many of them neglect to discuss their methods). Where did the people surveyed come from? How was the sample selected? At random? How random? From the phone book? From a Web site? Were the participants self-selecting (i.e. you're only surveying people who were demonstrably interested to begin with)? Obtaining a representative statistical sample may not be a "science," as such, but it's darn close.
There are also such things as leading questions. What if the question on this survey wasn't phrased the way it's stated in the report? What if they just asked, "Who is your preferred smartphone operating system vendor: Apple, RIM, Symbian, Microsoft, or Google?" Apple fans would immediately say Apple; everybody else would say Google. The typical consumer doesn't realize that when you're asking them if they want a smartphone with a RIM OS, what you're really asking them is whether they want a BlackBerry. (And judging from my own, purely anecdotal survey -- looking around me when I'm waiting in line for something -- a lot of people do want one.)
Some people also answer "yes" to surveys because they're secretly hoping they will get something for free. Sometimes it's not so secret; what if everybody who participated in this survey got a $20 off coupon for any smartphone they wanted from Verizon. Which phone would they be thinking about while they did the survey?
They say "lies, damn lies, and statistics" because it's easy to make numbers say pretty much anything you want -- especially if you aren't sticking to sound statistical principles. In my experience, fly-by-night marketing firms seldom do. It doesn't pay the bills.
Breakfast served all day!
For a brand new product vs an iconic powerhouse, that is little short of amazing.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Because it makes you feel happy. So much of what a human is revolves around feeling, that if you ignore it, you are going to miss a lot.
A perfect example of how feeling trumps logic is your assertion that charging daily takes a lot of time and attention. In fact it only takes 30 seconds of attention in the evening to plug your phone in, it is not something that should logically seem like a problem, and yet somehow it has created this loathing inside of you. That doesn't make any sense at all, and yet it is real (note: this doesn't apply if you actually use your phone so much that you have to charge it three times a day, but that isn't a problem for typical users, the type you were referring to).
Qxe4
Some of the answers are obvious; I'm not sure what's unsatisfying about them. It works well. It's not complicated to set up. It's functional as an iPod, which lots of people already owned. The web browser renders pages normally, the way a desktop computer would. It's mail application connects to mail servers normally, the way a desktop application would. "Visual voicemail" works the way voicemail should work-- no more "if you would like to listen to this message, please press 1". Apple proved that a touchscreen can work on a phone if it's executed properly. If you own a Mac and use iTunes already, then the phone will integrate extraordinarily well with your system in a convenient way. The iPhone had 8GB of storage built in for audio and video when most phones came with something more like 32 megs of internal storage. Apple managed to get a large set of developers to produce applications for their phone. The interface is simple and elegant, pretty, and responsive.
Android's success doesn't surprise me either. In a lot of ways, I think it's a validation of Apple's approach, and it proves that Apple's success wasn't simply based on hype and trendiness. The Android phones that are now enjoying success actually resemble the iPhone much more than any of the pre-iPhone smartphones. Look at the iPhone and the Motorola Q, and ask yourself which smartphone the Droid has more in common with. Apple was successful because they made a well designed product. Now Motorola is enjoying success because they've made a well designed product.
Wow, so demand for a phone that has sold tens of millions of units in the 2.5 years it's been out is leveling off, and demand for a newer phone that has sold far fewer units is growing? Stop the presses!
Dear Slashdot: next time you want to mess with the site, add a rich-text editor for comments.
When the market for the iPhone is saturated, then of course it's market share will drop when some new do-dad comes out.
Except the market for the iPhone is not really saturated. It's the market for the iPhone on AT&T's network that's saturated. I bet nearly everyone reading this post knows at least one person who drools over the iPhone but would sooner take a hot poker in the eye than switch to AT&T to get it.
When Apple opens up the iPhone to other carriers in the US, iPhone adoption will skyrocket due to that pent-up demand. And they are definitely going to open it up to other carriers as soon as the latest exclusivity agreement expires-- because AT&T has dragged them down long enough, and because other carriers will give Apple what they want, now that they have seen the success it brought to AT&T despite their sub-par network.
~Philly
Windows Mobile is on history's exit ramp.