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iBuy: iPhone users anticipate upgrade
An Apple Store customer looks at the new Apple iPhone 4Gs in San Francisco.
iPhone users say they will upgrade to the new iPhone 5....even though Apple hasn't even announced that there will be an iPhone 5. (of course they will, Paddy. Don't be stupid.)
The news that American consumers are preparing to splash out hundreds of dollars on something that doesn't even exist yet is making us feel a lot better about the economy. In fact, It's making the Marketplace Daily Pulse race a little!
A research firm called ChangeWave polled existing iPhone users to ask them whether they would upgrade. Thirty-one percent said they would, which prompted an analyst at RBC Capital to up his forecasts for sales of existing smartphones and churn of the iPhone line.
RBC commissioned the report from Changewave. You can access the full report on their website, but it costs $1500. Fortunately, for the thrifty among us, the highlights have been reported widely.
The report noted that when iPhone users were polled about possibly upgrading to the iPhone 4, ahead of its launch, just 25 percent said they would. The news that 31 percent will likely buy an iPhone 5 echoes a previous ChangeWave report that said people show a strong preference for iPhones over Android and RIM devices.
SciTech Today report that the survey follows on the heels of a July online PriceGrabber poll of 2,852 consumers that found 35 percent plan to grab a new iPhone, with 52 percent of them indicating they'll buy it within the first year of release; 30 percent plan to get one by the end of 2011; and 14 percent hope to buy it within the first month. Seven percent will get online to buy it within the first week. That survey was conducted July 1-11.
Sci Tech today reported that in a second survey of 2,297 consumers, Sept. 6-12, ChangeWave found that the resignation of Apple CEO Steve Jobs stands to have almost no effect on the demand for Apple products.
Apple has released a new iPhone every summer since 2007, usually in June.
I find this humorous that those addicted to Apple products think that only Apple offers a good smart phone. I just moved up in my retirement from an older Virgin Mobile cell $70 that ran most of the web, my email and connections fine for $40 per month total phone bill. Now to a new very high rated Android by LG for Virgin Mobile at $122 from Amazon (or about $149 at local electronics stores,) that does everything the ipod does including speaking-into-mic-typing and smart swipe typing into phone and the monthly bill? Still $40 for all services +Google Maps with live interactive GPS... Why would people pay Apple for this play toy iphone at what$ $200 ~ $400 for the phone purchase and then I hear most of them pay $60 ~ $90 per month for services? They must have allot of hard earned money to waste with their employment and jobs going away fast?
I have to agree, Mark. I'm amazed, not just by the way that Apple products hold people spellbound, but also that they're prepared to spend so much money on them, presumably at the expense of a lot of other things. I recently attended a lecture at Stanford at which behavioralists presented their conclusions that while people used to believe that they were defined by the car they drove or house they lived in, now they feel defined by the device they tap away on.
I have a Palm pixi, which I guess makes me a somewhat inefficient, underpowered leprachaun!
