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On average, U.S. iPhone users are slightly younger and much wealthier than Android counterparts,...
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Friday, October 12, 2012, 7:06 PM ETOn average, U.S. iPhone users are slightly younger and much wealthier than Android counterparts, according to charts from Horace Dediu. ~40% of iPhone users have household income of at least $100K, compared with ~25% of Android users, while the % of Android users with household income of less than $25K is about twice as high as the % of iPhone users. Two possible takeaways: The iPhone's demographics will help it maintain its app monetization edge (which affects developer support), and the iPhone would likely grab more share if Apple cut unsubsidized prices and enabled cheaper plans. (Piper)
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Of the households who earn more than $100k, 40% own iPhones.
This seemed surprising to me, but then I thought about the people I know. The vast majority of iPhone users I know are members of families (including children) whose household income is >$100k. So maybe what seemed surprising at first is kind of obvious.
Gender = 100%, Age = 100%, Income = 100%. The breakdown is what percentage of iphone owners fall into each income category -- not what percentage of folks in that income category own iPhones.
I agree it is confusing, but that is what the data is saying.
In any case, the chart from Horace that excites me most (as an Apple investor) is this one http://bit.ly/RnIhfC showing Apple's growth accelerating faster than the market as a whole.
http://bit.ly/UWWiBS
gap btwn perception and reality is closing big time
gonna get ugly for all the late comers who piled into it and refuse to believe it can go lower...and stay lower.
take the next $25 rally as a gift and get out
I know they didn't treat their IPO victims well, but Facebook is a player in the internet economy and it's foolish to write them off.
Well, the markets tanked because earnings have been proving soft. This has lots of folks running for the exits. Tech has people especially worried and some AAPL investors are either locking in gains or panicking. If Google and IBM and MSFT and INTC are doing poorly, the reasoning goes, AAPL must be in trouble too.
And this belies a lack of understanding of many of the underlying reasons that these companies are doing poorly. But Apple is actually made stronger by some of the very forces that have led to declines for these companies. This will be made clear in short order, and there will be a rush to re-enter long positions in AAPL.
That's 'sup. You?
I look forward to continuing this enlightening discussion in the weeks and months ahead.
That's included with many phones offered by the competition.
Maybe, if you showed that there are VERY limited options for pay as you go iPhone5 plans (one, I think) you could justify your iPhone premium, but those no-contract plans don't include other premium smart phones like the GSIII.
As for the future, I think we're at the tip of the iceberg of shared data plans making a real difference and those include unlimited talk/text.
Eventually price will become an issue.
40% vs 25%? Yep, sounds about right to me considering Apple only sells flagship models vs Android's multi-pronged strategy.
I don't see this news as a positive for Apple - far from it, in fact. What it means is that the older models (ip4/4s) don't sell well, inspite of being $99 or free on contract.
Guess which segment of the market is growing under current economic situation.......?
By definition that segment of the market has less disposable income. You can make money selling low priced, low margin items to folks on a tight budget (just look at Walmart) but you need to sell a lot of stuff to do it. Higher margins require fewer sales to make decent money. This is why Apple has 75% of the smart phone profit. That is where the "positive for Apple" comes in.
True.
Since the iPhone, as we all have heard non-stop from Apple bulls, is now considered less a gadget and more of a "status symbol". The iPhone users would obviously be more concerned about "status" and keeping up with the Joneses than their android-buying counterparts and thus more inclined to lie about things like household income on an anonymous survey. ;)
The data seems to indicate exactly the opposite of what you suggest.
Some more links if you are interested in the numbers:
(http://bit.ly/R4DCAl) (http://bit.ly/W3o3gZ)
http://bit.ly/KNdpRX
What I like about StatCounter is that you can see the information easily and quickly for time and location changes. One thing that should be obvious is that trends in the United States do not match trends in other parts of the world. U.S. based investors seem to forget that there is a larger market. This is becoming even more important, in that the U.S. smartphone market appears to be saturated, which implies that devices will be bought mostly as replacements in the future, and that there are fewer new smartphone users entering the U.S. market.
Many companies have made mistakes thinking that what works in one market area can be repeated in another. Savvy companies realize that products and advertising more uniquely tailored to a region or area can lead to better growth rates. If you want to see Apple grow more, then you need to look outside the U.S. to spot the trends.
We are approaching a time when "market share" (new device sales) will become slightly less important, and "user base" (number of active users on a platform, even with older devices) will gain in emphasis. Some mass media articles already touch upon user base. The importance is one of monetizing the user base. Beyond simply selling a device, recurring revenues from a large user base can be highly profitable. Apple has iTunes and apps, though I would expect user data to allow monetizing iAD in the near future. Google monetizes search and browsing data from Android. Microsoft don't appear to have much of a strategy yet, though we may know more soon. Research In Motion has a BlackBerry user base that allows them recurring revenues through carriers for every device still in use. User base is mostly about monetizing software and accessory items, which are far more profitable than selling a new handset at regular time frame intervals.
There are 2+ times more Android phones sold than iPhones yet the volume of iPhone web traffic exceeds Android web traffic (or approaches it depending on which stats you decide to use). It's pretty solid evidence that the iPhone is used more than Android not a "Status Symbol" as Shangjeen suggest.
As for stat accuracy, they all have biases which is why I linked wikipedia's which gives a nice summary of four major stat counters (including global statistics and the stat company you linked).
http://bit.ly/GVmrx5
How do you explain Opera being the number one worldwide mobile browser? Which mobile operating systems have a choice of using the Opera browser? Do you know the Series 40 operating system, and why it recently increased in web usage?
The status symbol idea use to be important. The old joke was that if you wanted to know if someone had an iPhone, just wait and they will tell you. A friend of mine recently got an iPhone 5, and I told him that will be good for about one week of conversation. He's also the one who showed me first hand the melting buildings and falling bridges in the maps. I disagree with the status symbol idea now, because so many people out in public already have an iPhone; there is no longer anything special about having an iPhone; very few people now flaunt having an iPhone, as compared to a year or two ago. In fact, doing that now would make you look like a tool, because no one cares anymore who has an iPhone or who does not.
Apple is not directly monetizing the action of users accessing the internet on iPhones, unless they are compiling data like Google, then selling that data for usage in advertising. Quite likely that is the next direction, as Apple load more of their own apps and content onto their devices. There are still several hardware changes they could do in iPhone 6, but I think Apple knows the real path to future revenues is monetizing the user base.
I'm surprised the percentage for iPhone owners isn't much higher than what's reported here.
http://1.usa.gov/yN8Mkm
Until these change, IOS and Apple will firmly be in the lead. And for the record, I have an IPad and Samsung Galaxy, so I see value in both systems.
The consumer is irrational, preferring syle over performance. Netbooks beat the ipad, but we all buy ipads. Apple needs no research to stay on top. Intel needs to spend $30billion. Intel forgot consumers are irrational.
http://seekingalpha.co...