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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."
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
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.
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.
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.