“For Samsung, the strategy has been to give customers two, and at times, three products from which to choose before Apple releases its new iteration,” Wall Street Playbook writes for Seeking Alpha. “To achieve this, Samsung management has put in place a 6 to 8 month product refresh cycle. They know that Apple couldn’t or would choose not to follow suit. Apple, meanwhile, refreshes/updates its iPhone and other devices every 12 to 18 months.”
“Apple investors have a very important reason to remain excited. Aside from the fact that Apple management has finally embraced the idea of a bigger phone, statistics show that several iPhone users have not upgraded their phones in quite some time,” WSP writes. “Morgan Stanley (MS) conducted a recent study, which revealed that many older generation iPhones remain in circulation, including the three-year old iPhone 4. Interestingly, the study highlighted that among the devices on the Verizon network, more than half of those devices were either iPhone 4 or the iPhone 4S. And that’s the same situation with AT&T.”
“This study, which suggests significant pent-up demand for customers who are in a position to upgrade to the iPhone 6, is why analysts didn’t care about Apple’s weak iPad results in its recent earnings report. From that standpoint, it’s only a matter of time before analysts figure out what this sort of pent-up demand may mean,” WSP writes. “It’s a good thing Samsung is selling its phones now. It will be hard to convince Android users not to switch to Apple.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: As we wrote on Friday:
An iPhone with a larger screen option will hurt Samsung immeasurably more than myriad, unending traipses through the legal morass.