“Barclays’ Mark Moskowitz and his team recently parsed the results of the firm’s latest Wireless Subscriber Survey, conducted in the second half of July, which drew respondents from the U.S., China, U.K. and Germany,” Teresa Rivas reports for Barron’s.
“Not surprisingly to anyone with an older smartphone, the survey found that battery life is the No. 1 reason consumers decide to upgrade, while virtual and augmented reality ranked quite low, even though they’ve grabbed headlines,” Rivas reports. “Moskowtiz warns that this means investor optimism around Apple’s efforts to build an AR/VR ecosystem could be overdone, which he likes to the AI bandwagon for IBM last year.”
MacDailyNews Take: Wrong. The average Joe or Jane today doesn’t know augmented reality from their elbow. When they see practical applications of AR on iPhone, they’ll understand and they’ll want it very badly.
Rivas reports, “He writes that there are also some mixed data points to the upside potential for the new iPhone: ‘iPhone is the lead beneficiary of potential switchers, and the iPhone users in the survey sample exhibit stronger purchasing power. As for sensitivity to larger ASPs, though, only 11% of total survey respondents indicated they are willing to pay more than $1,000 for a next-gen smartphone, but 18% of iPhone users are willing to pay more than $1,000. That last figure is still lower than the 30-35% figure that investors are targeting for sales mix related to a new higher-priced iPhone introduced later this year.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Wait until the next-gen iPhones are unveiled and the features are laid out for all the world to see. Then you’ll really see who’s willing to pay and how much they’ll be willing to pay.
The results of the latest Wireless Subscriber Survey are premature for gauging next-gen, as-yet-unveiled iPhone purchase intentions.