“Verizon said it activated 4 million iPhones from Apple in its first quarter. The good news is that is 25% year-over-year growth,” Chris Ciaccia reports for TheStreet. “The bad news is that people are still flocking to older phones.”
“On a conference call Thursday, Verizon Chief Financial Officer Fran Shammo said Verizon sold 2 million iPhone 5s units during the quarter, with the other 2 million being 3G devices (read iPhone 4 and iPhone 4S),” Ciaccia reports. “It’s important to note that the market still wants Apple products, but they are not seeing any major difference between the iPhone 4, iPhone 4S and iPhone 5 in terms of added benefits that would make them upgrade.”
Ciaccia reports, “This may also be another sign that Apple needs to come up with a cheaper iPhone, unless it can demonstrate major innovations to the devices. People want to own Apple products, but they are not willing to pay for them if there isn’t a perceived reason to do so.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We don’t get it, but perhaps we’re too close. After all, we know everything there is to know about each iPhone model.
To us, the speed of LTE, the lightweight design (iPhone 5 is 20 percent lighter and 18 percent thinner than iPhone 4S!), the markedly larger screen, the noticeably faster A6 processor, the dual-band Wi-Fi, the improved front camera, the improved video stabilization, the ability to take still photos while recording video, the included, much superior Apple EarPods, the rear microphone, etc. add up to easily make the iPhone 5 a no-brainer, especially considering that, with a two year contract, what you spend upfront on the phone averages out to only a few bucks difference per month.
A 16GB iPhone 5 costs $199 with a two-year contract. A 16GB iPhone 4S costs $99. An 8GB iPhone 4 (no Siri, just an A4, etc.) costs $0. Over the 24-month life of the contract, the iPhone 5, with all of the improvements it offers, costs just $4.16 per month more than an iPhone 4S and just $8.29 per month more than a lowly iPhone 4! Of course, the longer you go past the initial two-year contract, choosing the superior-in-every-way iPhone 5 will cost you even less per month.
Listen, if $8.29 or less per month is a meaningful amount to you, then you can’t afford a smartphone.
As anyone who owns an iPhone 5 can tell you, it makes all other phones, including older iPhones, seem thick, heavy, unrefined, and slow by comparison.
Are people just unable to make simple value judgements and/or have Apple and/or the carriers failed to explain why iPhone 5 is the blatantly obvious choice?