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

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.

There are a lot of people like this:

[XanC]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FL7yD-0pqZg

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: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.