35% Consumers Want iPhone 5... Sight Unseen 566
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."
Re:That's retarded (Score:3, Interesting)
... 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 [wikipedia.org]. 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.
Re:No big surprise... (Score:3, Interesting)
All the android people come out screaming about all their advanced features and how they're always ahead of apple. But what they don't do is come out screaming about the high quality of their phones. I've got an ORIGINAL iphone. My wife has a 4. I also have a company supplied Galaxy S, and we've both had blackberries. As far as features, the android phones always win. As for quality, dependability, stability, etc the iphones always win. Blackberry used to have that wrapped up, but they've fallen behind on quality in the last 5 years.
Oh, let me do a good old fashioned fixed that for you:
The masses are hooked on quality in functionality,
Re:In other words (Score:2, Interesting)
To people who actually use a product, their experiences using the said product likely far outweighs stupid quotes by CEO's they've never dealt with.
Question: among the average consumer, what percentage do you believe exploits the breadth of features in their chosen phone such that the experience could be distinguished among any alternative that is remotely functionally equivalent.
In other words, I would wager that most smart phone users rarely do much beyond basic features such as phone calls, texting, email, clock/alarm, browsing, very simple gaming. Among these, in which area does Apple really excel? Superior calling? Not a claim I have ever heard. Text-based communications? Not much wiggle room there, unless you happen to dislike on-screen keyboards. Clock/alarm? Please. Browsing? Games (with no physical buttons)?
Certainly, many people could be very happy with how all of these features work on their iPhone. The point is, where is there any opportunity for significant "experience" differentiation? I contend that there is very little. And if there isn't, what does drive brand appeal, if not marketing, perceived status symbolization and other factors that fellow brand-adherents are unlikely to acknowledge with much relish.