35% Consumers Want iPhone 5... Sight Unseen

judgecorp writes "Apple's iPhone 5 is not announced yet, but 35 percent of consumers say they will buy it, when it comes out, even though they know nothing about it. The figure comes from an online survey of 3,000 US consumers by Experian's PriceGrabber shopping website."

Comments

In other words

[Dyinobal]

In other words 35% of consumers don't care about the product but the social symbol it is and the status they think it confers on them.

Re:In other words

[Grizzley9]

In other words 35% of consumers don't care about the product but the social symbol it is and the status they think it confers on them.

No, in other words Apple has created a good brand that people have come to trust in respect to their next smartphone. But go on hatin' if it makes you feel better that many people choose an iPhone b/c it's a good phone and just as good if not better than many Android handsets.

Re:In other words

[TrailerTrash]

Careful about anti-fanboyism - auto-mockery of what others love, just as blindly. Apple has a good track record as measured by customer satisfaction on their phones, and many people have confidence that that record will continue. My family is rocking two Blackberries, a Nexus S, and two iPhones, and I'll probably replace the iPhone 3GS with an iPhone 5 if it looks decent and provides incremental value. Not an automatic decision. But given the track record, I would probably answer a survey that I'd be interested in buying one. And I'm no fanboy of Apple, having literally thrown a Mac three years ago into the garbage because I hated it so much. Though I will admit my Apple Lisa and Apple ][+ were pretty sweet in the day.

Re:In other words

[OverlordQ]

But go on hatin' if it makes you feel better that many people choose an iPhone b/c it's a good phone and just as good if not better than many Android handsets.

Sounds like you're the one hating that iPhones have been out longer and but has a smaller market share then Android phones.

Re:In other words

[mcmonkey]

Sure, to some extent this covers fanbois and sheeple, but the full 35%.

For example, if included in the survey my wife would be in that 35%. She's looking for a smart phone that will also replace her iPod. She also doesn't get a new phone every other day, so when she does upgrade, she goes to the latest and greatest.

If the iPhone 5 was a year off, she'd just go ahead and get an iPhone 4. But since she expects the 5 in September, she's going to wait.

The potentially faulty assumption she is making is not that having the newest iPhone is a social symbol, but that the new iPhone will be at least as good as the old iPhone.

Why is it so strange or sad folks would want the new iPhone sight unseen? If you felt that way about the first iPhone, yeah then you might be a fanboi. But at this point, we know what the iPhone does, what its weaknesses are, what level of changes we see from one generation to the next.

It's like asking if you'd be interested in dating a supermodel's sister, sight unseen. Not quite the same as asking if you're interested a random woman pulled off the street.

Re:In other words

[elrous0]

and are expecting the next generation to be the same but faster and plain better

You mean like how the new versions of Final Cut Pro and OS X Server are big improvements over their predecessors?

Re:In other words

[Bo'Bob'O]

Actually it's less interesting then even that. All this says that is a bunch of people are planning to make their next phone an iOS phone, and are waiting until the next generation to do it. Big deal.

My next desktop will be a windows machine, my next laptop probably a mac, my next phone probably android. I don't know exactly what form these will take, these purchases are months if not years off, but if there is a better model/version on the verge of release, I'd probably wait a few months extra for it to come out.

35% of what?

[captainpanic]

35% of people who visit the Apple website on a daily basis? 35% of people who registered for some random website through their iPhone?

Seems like an awfully high percentage for just a regular average consumer survey.

Duh.. Not rocket science.

[GrBear]

Of course I want an iPhone 5.. my 3GS is due for a contractual upgrade, so why not get the 5. I already know what the 4 will do, and each release of the phone has been progressively better.

It's not like I want to throw away my investments in apps and go to another OS (droid or win7). Sounds like a no-brainer to me, not a cultists mindless decision that commentators make it out to sound like.

Re:That's retarded

[Anonymous Coward]

Apple has been making people believe it has been making quality phones for years, so it is a reasonable assumption that the next one will also be a quality product, so it is reasonable for some people to say that they will buy iPhone 5 when it comes out.

FTFY

Re:That's retarded

[Anonymous Coward]

Correction - Apple has been making underwhelming, inferior phones for some time now.

Anything that you can't pop open and replace the battery on is crap.
Anything that blocks signal just because of how you hold the phone is crap.
Anything with an Apple logo is crap.

Social symbol?

[Petersko]

The only people that think owning an iPhone is somehow a social symbol are Android users with inferiority complexes. Having an iPhone stopped being unusual years ago.

Re:Social symbol?

[lidocaineus]

now explain to me why ipad sells more.

Because hardware specs do not make a product superior.

I call on all moderators to mod down the hate

[hellfire]

Okay this is just bullshit. First, this is not news for nerds, this is news for:

1) Apple Fanbois to thump their chest on
2) Android Fanbois to fires of their hatred of anything Apple
3) Business Marketroids, who are most definitely not nerds

Obviously I have to start voting with my eyeballs and look to some other site for quality news. There's nothing of substance in an article like this, it's just flamebait for all the Apple-Android flame wars.

But just to answer all three groups and point out my utter annoyance with all of them:

1) Just because you are popular doesn't mean you have the best product. Doesn't mean you don't, but "everyone else is buying it" is a top fallacy that everyone needs to stop using as a badge of honor.
2) I love how you point out 35% of people are [stupid/easy to fool/lambs to the slaughter/insert overdone cliche] and then out of the other side of your mouth point out how Android phones are more popular in volume than Apple phones. To those of you who do, see #1 and stop thinking you are somehow better than Apple fanbois because you are not, you are 100% just like them.
3) You are not nerds, get off this site so the nerds can mod these stories into oblivion. /rant

Re:I think you don't understand technology

[RazzleFrog]

This website used to cater to nerds who care about free and open platforms but at some point did a complete 180 to support the most closed and controlled platform in the world.

That's misleading, yes?

[dmomo]

No. Not 35% of consumers. 35% of people who filled out the survey. There is no qualification of the sample in the article. Who knows how they were chosen?

35% seems shockingly high. Shockingly convenient for a who-the-heck-are-you website that could really get attention.

Re:Apple marketing department

[jellomizer]

It isn't as much that we follow and bend to Fanboism from Apples marketing department. It is more the fact we really haven't had any real negative experience with Apple products vs. Other companies...

I have had some products and phones in the past that after I used them I put on my list not to use that company again, unless they have really changed their way...
Motorola, Compaq/HP, Gateway, Chrysler, GE Appliances...

Then there are companies that I have had overall good experiences with.
LG, Samsung, Apple, Toyota, Lenovo...
So I would buy from them again without having such a critical eye.

Now it is up to those companies that I had good experience with to prove me wrong. And the ones I have a bad experience with they really need to prove that they are much better then before.

Apple has consistently offered a quality product which I have been happy with, and was useful. Not to say Apple product was the best product but it is a safe bet that I will be happy with it.

This website has covered a lot more than GNU/Linux

[Brannon]

for its entire history--it has covered all manner of technology (closed or not). The PS3/Wii/Xbox are all far more closed platforms than iPhones, and they've all gotten plenty of ink here. The space shuttle program has also gotten a lot of ink, I assume you don't believe that's an open platform, do you?

Re:This also means...

[gstoddart]

No, it means that 35% are fanbois that care more about being seen as well off than with the quality of the product.

So, that's an assertion, and a biased one at that.

As someone who doesn't own a smart phone, but who knows tons of people who have them ... I'm more inclined to think that these people are exceedingly satisfied with their phones, and expect that a new generation will continue to be more of the same.

I actually don't know a single person who owns an iPhone (or iPod, or iPad) who owns it to "be seen as well off" -- in fact, they own them because of a perceived quality of the product and the overall user experience.

Do you have anything that actually objectively supports the notion that people buying these devices are more concerned with the perceptions of other people than they are of their own perceptions of quality? Because I can tell you for a fact that I like my iPod and my iPad because, in part, I like the consistency of iTunes across these devices ... I sync the same data to these devices using the same tool. (And I've used the Palm Pre my wife's work bought her ... quite frankly, I'm underwhelmed.)

I just don't get this unfounded assertion that everybody with something made by Apple has it as purely a fashion statement. In fact, most of the people I know who own these devices fall into one of two categories: 1) people who aren't technology buffs but want something which 'just works', and 2) people who work with technology but have reached an age where endless fiddling with a device is more of a nuisance and want something which 'just works'. I'm afraid I have no samples from the shallow teenager department as my sample is all from people aged 30+.

Hell, the last time I flew on a plane, the old man in the seat in front of me (easily in his 70s) took out his hearing aid (!), and put in the headphones from his iPhone to listen to music for the flight. I'm pretty sure he doesn't have an iPhone to look trendy or cool.

Why is everybody so wedded to this notion of these products being bought only by hipsters who wish to be seen with one? My observations show me as many people with sore hips have them as any other demographic.

Re:I think you don't understand technology

[UnknowingFool]

iphones still cannot do basic smartphone stuff like run arbitrary code.

Except that it can you are a developer. Now it can't run arbitrary code from anywhere but considering how much malware exists for Android, most consumers wouldn't consider that a feature.

why else would they buy a phone that doesn't even have a fucking file manager?

Seriously, are you saying the arcane notion of having to manuallly manipulate files == true smartphone OS? So do you consider only languages where you have micro-manage memory registers like assembly to be "real" programming languages.

the thing with smartphones is 90% people who think they need a smartphone do not need it. they just need voice, text and the web. if you are one of these people, iphone is ideal. if not, there are many true smartphones out there.

So your definition of smartphone isn't the commonly accepted one where users are allowed to do those things. Instead your defintion is one where users have to things they no longer have to do because of something called progress. So in your world do you have to hand crank your car to start it and need to adjust the engine timing otherwise it's not a true car?