“Twenty percent of Apple’s iPhone customers over the past year were switching from an Android phone, but only 7% of Samsung buyers had previously owned an iPhone, according to a new study released to Fortune by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.
“42% of Apple’s customers between July 2012 and June 2013 were upgrading from another iPhone,” P.E.D. reports. “Samsung drew more first-time smartphone buyers upgrading from so-called feature phones (37%) than Apple did (26%).”
P.E.D. reports, “Among buyers who switched brands, Apple took three times as many from Samsung (33%) as Samsung took from Apple (11%)”
Read more in the full article here.
I know of someone, an otherwise very nice sociable chap, who switched from an iPhone 3GS to a Samsung Galaxy S3 because he wanted a larger screen. He had invested in Apple iTunes store apps but he just wanted a larger screen because he didn’t want to carry a tablet and smartphone around with him.
So he is in the 7%. 😎
Everyone should buy what they want and want what they buy.
Maybe the guy has trouble reading his phone screen? It does not matter. PS, is he happy with his Samdung phone?
I carry my iPhone with me pretty much everywhere and i carry my iPad when I am going to need it. But with squinting and zooming, I can get buy with my phone most of the time.
Just a thought.
So, the natural progression is:
“Feature”-phone (i.e. dumbphone) -> Android -> iPhone.
And for smart people:
Featurephone -> iPhone
Most importantly, the trend has been showing for quite some time, and has not shown signs of slowing.
If that were true iphone’s marketshare wouldn’t be at 13%
Also note the article compares Apple & Samsung
The research shows it to be true. However, there are still very many people stuck on step 2 (featurephone -> Android), and have not yet moved to step 3 (iPhone). The trend is consistent, though.
In many places, the iPhone was not an option. So, they were stuck with the Android phones. See what happened to Verizon, Sprint, … and soon China Mobile. Samsung’s market share isn’t about people choosing Android. It is because they were not offered the iPhone option. YET!
To me, this makes sense. If, by this year, you still don’t own a smartphone, you probably don’t understand what the big deal is. So when you finally take the plunge, you’re going to go with the cheapest option. Why spend money on something you’re not even sure you want?
Then, once you’ve had your Android phone for awhile, you’ve had a taste of what smartphones can do, and you’re ready for a device that can do it better. So your next phone will be an iPhone.
——RM
The opposite happened to me.
The chances of the faceless Korean also-rand getting this iPhone user to switch:
Nil.