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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."
They're probably people like me who own the 3gs (or older), still had time too much time on their plans (or who thought the 4 didn't quite justify an upgrade), and believe the next one is likely a good time to step up.
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.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL7yD-0pqZg
Apple marketing department: Bend over ... this will be a pleasant surprise
Apple fanboi: Yes please
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.
It makes me wonder what the percentage is for Windows users and the next version of Windows.
Every time I start to have faith in humanity, I ruin it by driving to work between 7 and 8 am.
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.
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.
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.
... and yet they sell. Perception of a product is very important. People know that iPhones are "good" (enough), they know that everyone and their dog know how to handle them and thus cannot be too complicated to use (whether this is true or not). One final thing that Apple does correctly: restrict choice. That might be counter-intuitive to you, but when you buy an iPhone you know exactly what you get. The only differences consist in how much storage space you have and whether you get the black or the white one. That's it.
You might think that bad, but in a sense it isn't. How many HTC phones you you have? A shitload and you aren't sure whether the one you get is going to fit. I happen to have a HTC Smart. Bad choice? At first you think it's one of the "good" ones because it really looks like it runs HTC Sense. It was also damned cheap and that should have raised a red flag. Now, last time, I came up with this in a discussion, I got slammed because I didn't get the 500€ HTC running (Desire, etc...). Yes, true... My mistake... Still, if I was going to spend 600€, why not get the iPhone as I know that it is decent quality and easy to use.
The iPhone has in a sense become the "Windows of Smartphones": The baseline everything else is compared with. To make a phone better than the iPhone it needs to be cheaper (very important! If it's more expensive or on par, the choice falls on the iPhone), as easy or easier to use than the iPhone, and be able to compete on the "apps" (hate the word) that you can install.
We have one iPhone in the household. It belongs to my wife, and while I wouldn't mind having one myself, I simply cannot justify another 50€/month plan (sure the phone is "only" 49€ then). I keep the crap phone with the cheap plan. My wife, a computer neophyte, has never been so happy with a phone. She now actually uses the Internet on it, buys songs, uses facebook and writes email. Something I never managed to get her to do on her computer.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
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. /rant
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.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
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.
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.
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?
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.
Lost at C:>. Found at C.
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?
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
So you're basically looking for a new device to continue your meaningless, consumer-driven lives?
Certainly. It's the patriotic thing to do.
Why do you hate America?
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
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?
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.
You are confusing two different problems with radio transmissions. In one instance, the hand is obstructing the antenna, thereby decreasing the signal. In the other instance, you are shorting the antenna and thereby interfering with the transmission. There is little you can do to prevent objects from blocking the path of the radio signal. But you're damned stupid to put a bare antenna right along the edge of a device meant to be held in the hand. Have you never used rabbit ear antennas in your life?
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.
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?
Let's ask someone with a clue: Why we’re betting everything on FCP X
Fandroids hate facts.