cellrater

So yes we have all seen the iPhone and sure, its a beautiful looking handset; but will people throw down their hard earned cash for some flashy looks and mediocre new features? Well, I think the answer is yes and no. I mean, sure you are going to have your hardcore fanboys, and then you will have your upper class individuals who just want something flashy, you may get the occasional teen who saved up all his lunch money for the past year and a half since it was announced, and probably trick a few business professionals who want a blackberry alternative…

So that makes for a pretty decent spectrum of people but will the phone continue to bring in sales over time once the “hype” has worn out. Once the phone has been in the market and the business professionals realize that the touch screen is no alternative to blackberry’s tactile keyboard and push emails, Once the holy wood trendiness has worn off and people start buying a different phone just to be different, and once the high school kids realize they could have bought a lesser phone with similar features AND a Nintendo wii for the same price.

As you can tell I think that the phone is nice but ultimately not “all that” but to give an unbiased opinion and some real stats Markitecture did a national survey with a sample of 1,300 “responsible” cell phone owners. Statistics showed 77% of people were familiar with the iPhone (thats promising!) and moreso 83% of the people actually stated that they were VERY familiar with the phone AND had an overall excellent impression with the product (Even better news for apple!). When the surveyors were asked their likelihood of purchasing the product in the next year the numbers dropped to 6% with 2/3 of people in the survey giving a Zero percent chance of purchasing the iPhone.

The biggest reason to their decision? Pricing. Coming in a close second was Carrier issues and contracts.

So its not that people don’t want the phone, I think we can all agree apple has done an amazing job creating this product but the price and fact that people are stuck with Cingular/AT&T that is holding them back. I think that I was disappointed to know that I couldn’t just order one off APPLE.com in an unlocked format. As far as the price goes, I read somewhere a while back that apple will be making a 50% profit on these 500 dollar phones. Now I cant really vouch for that being true, some kid in his moms basement probably made that number up but if it is true then why did Apple team up with Cingular and why isn’t there more of a price drop? Is Apple just being greedy? What do you guys think?

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This entry was posted on Friday, May 4th, 2007 at 9:24 am and is filed under Apple. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.