iPhone News Updated

Brisk Apple iPhone Sales Dominated by Upgrades

Brisk Apple iPhone Sales Dominated by Upgrades

Existing
iPhone owners upgrading to the iPhone 4 were mostly responsible for
draining the stock of the coveted phone at retail stores across the U.S.
Thursday. Seventy-seven percent of iPhone customers in line at Apple
Stores on Thursday were repeat iPhone users, according to researchers at
Piper Jaffray.

The Piper Jaffray numbers come from a research it shared with its
clients and also reported by publications such as Fortune. The survey results
give an interesting view of who Apple’s die hard iPhone customers,
willing stand in line for hours, really are. Here are the highlights.

Overwhelming Repeats

Piper Jaffray reports that 38 percent more people upgraded their
iPhone the first day the latest model became available compared to last
year. In 2009 Jaffray reported 56 percent of iPhone 3GS buyers on launch
day were upgrading their handsets and 38 percent of iPhone 3G buyers
from 2008 did so.

“Apple has in three years built brand loyalty in the phone market
that compels users to upgrade to the latest version and wait in line for
one to six hours to pick up their iPhone,” writes Piper Jaffray analyst
Gene Munster.

Smartphone Loyalty

As far as wooing new iPhone users from other smartphone bases, 6
percent of non-iPhone users were switching from Research in Motion’s
Blackberry, 3 percent from Google’s Android and 2 percent were from
Nokia.

Piper Jaffray’s findings appear to back up results from other
surveys that suggest customer loyalty is relatively high for most, but
not all smartphone brands. A Nielsen study recently found that 80 percent of
iPhone users and 70 percent of Android users intended to stick with
their smartphone brand. Only 47 percent of Blackberry users, however,
were interested in sticking with RIM.

It’s All About the Features

Perhaps unsurprisingly Piper Jaffray found that 90 percent of
iPhone 4 buyers wanted the device for its new features such as the video
calling feature, FaceTime. Only 10 percent of iPhone 4 customers
were getting the new device because their mobile phone plans had
expired.

Getting Worse for
AT&T

All those repeat iPhoners are good news for Apple, but may be bad
news for AT&T. With 77 percent repeat iPhone users, only 16 percent
of those surveyed were new to AT&T. That’s down from 28 percent
new AT&T customers in 2009, 38 percent in 2008, and a whopping 54
percent in 2007, when the original iPhone debuted. Then again, these are
only launch day results; it remains to be seen whether AT&T’s recent iPhone monthly fee price cut will attract
new users.

While Apple has stood by AT&T as the iPhone’s carrier of
choice, criticisms continue to mount against AT&T’s quality of
service. ChangeWave Research recently found that AT&T had the lowest rate of customer satisfaction among the
major cell phone carriers. Another survey by ChangeWave said AT&T also had the most dropped calls of any
major carrier. It’s doubtful AT&T’s recent iPhone pre-ordering snafu helped
matters either. Regardless, it looks like U.S. iPhone users won’t have
a choice beyond AT&T until at least 2012.

Munster also said Piper Jaffray expects Apple to sell 1 million to
1.5 million iPhones by Sunday including pre-orders, according to
Fortune. Those sales numbers would line up with previous iPhone launch
weekends. In 2008 and 2009, Apple said it had sold “more than one
million” iPhone 3G and iPhone 3GS devices during their respective launch
weekends.

[Thanks: http://www.pcworld.com]

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