Data from yesterday’s iPhone 4 marathon of line-standing are trickling across the intertubes.
I found this to be less sunny a prediction than the analyst they quoted as saying “mission accomplished.”
77% of iPhone 4 sales were upgrades – Apple 2.0 – Fortune Tech
Apple has always sold well into its sweetspot of users, so if anything, wouldn’t analysts be looking for them to take marketshare from others?
The survey size isn’t terribly large (only 608 respondents), but here are two points that stuck out for me:
- Only 3% of people were switching from an Android device to iPhone, and only 6% were switching from BlackBerry to iPhone.
- 16% of buyers were switching carriers to AT&T, up from 28% last year.
I interpret these as bad signs for Apple. Am I wrong?
Find the comments.
Twitter Comment
77% of iPhone 4 sales were upgrades [link to post]
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When looking at the 3% who switched from Android, we have to remember that Android is a relatively new platform, and therefore you wouldn't expect a lot of people to switch until their current contracts expire.
Because Blackberry has been around for a while, the fact that only 6% were switching from Blackberry is more statistically significant.
If Apple truly wanted to become a dominant player in smartphones, they'd offer a low-cost phone and insist that their exclusive service providers offer low-cost contracts to their users. However, such a move is completely foreign to Apple's business model.
Good point about Android, even very early adopters will only be near the end of their contracts.
A Verizon iPhone is immensely critical to Apple. Although any CDMA iPhone would help, Verizon has the coverage, the marketing, the customer base to make iPhone dominant. That would make the Droid marketing a bit weird though, since they've been drilling the iPhone since Day 1.
The fact that fewer consumers are switching carriers seems significant too, given the exclusivity of AT&T's contract with Apple.
Dueling debuts.
Nice. I'd heard that one of the new Microsoft stores was right across from an Apple store. What a weird cross-section though. I wonder how many of the people in line for Disney concert tickets own Apple stuff.
Would be fun to get a real duel going, i.e. two products, equally anticipated, coming out the same day. Not that Microsoft has ever had anything like that.