Apple iPhone: The Surveys Are In
July 17, 2007 by Susan Gunelius
Filed under Marketing
The Apple iPhone has been on the market for a few weeks now, and USA Today reports that initial reactions from buyers have been tallied. Interpret, a market research company in California, conducted an online survey of 1,000 cellphone users between July 6th and 10th. The survey shows that 3 out of 10 iPhone buyers were first time Apple product owners. That’s a major coup for the Apple brand. Not surprisingly, 90% of the 200 iPhone users surveyed were extremely or very satisfied with their iPhone and 85% would recommend the iPhone to other people. That word-of-mouth advertising should make Apple very happy.
The results weren’t all positive though, and Apple has some work to do to improve the features seen as negatives for the iPhone including:
- Price is too high
- Battery life is too short
- Internet speed is too slow
- Not enough internal memory
- No physical keyboard
AT&T Wireless, the exclusive carrier for the iPhone, also received good news from the survey. Not only do iPhone owners expect to pay $35 more per month than they did with their previous cellphone carriers equating to big bucks for AT&T, but it turns out that AT&T is not creating the barrier to entry into the iPhone marketplace that was speculated before the product launched. In fact, 50% of iPhone buyers surveyed switched from another cellphone carrier. Here’s the breakdown of surveyed buyers’ previous cellphone carriers:
- AT&T-Cingular: 49%
- Verizon: 25%
- Sprint Nextel: 11%
- T-Mobile: 6%
- Alltel: 3%
- U.S. Cellular: 2%
- Other: 2%
- Virgin Mobile: 1%
- Helio: 1%
I’m sure Apple and AT&T are pleased with these results so far. I still think the price needs to drop for more people to buy an iPhone, and I’m waiting to see how satisfied people are with their AT&T cellphone coverage once they really start using their iPhones (based on my poor coverage when I had AT&T Wireless service).
For more information from Brandcurve about the iPhone, read:
Apple and AT&T Launch New iPhone Commercials
I just read that c-net article about all the bugs found in the iphone. Have you seen that, unless I’m mistaken (always a strong possibility) they found like 7 bugs or something. On an AT&T note they made a huge stupid marketing/branding move about 10 years ago that I’ve never forgiven so I won’t use their services. But then I already had cingular and low and behold the merge. I was so mad.