Nearly half of all consumers say they plan to buy an iPhone in the next three months, which works swell with Apple’s plans to launch the iPhone 5 within that same prime season. It’s not a bad welcoming party for a next gen device which, aside from some broad strokes from its companion iOS 5 operating system, Apple hasn’t even shown off yet. And yet according to a recent survey, forty six percent of folks say they’ll be buying. The numbers are stunning, as that’s not out of all current iPhone users, or out of all current smartphone buyers – it’s among the general population. Suddenly the discrepancies in marketshare between Apple’s iPhone line and its other lines like the iPad and iPod, the latter two of which have overwhelming majority marketshare even as the iPhone has yet to even so much as conquer a simple majority of the smartphone market, may be ready to resolve themselves as Apple’s original vision of an iPhone in every consumer’s hands sounds like it’s about to come at least halfway true according to ChangeWave as reported by Betaews. So why the sudden change heading into the land of iPhone 5, after years of the iPhone not being able to score marketshare numbers anywhere near that? Factors from iPhone 5 carrier expansion to Verizon (and quite possibly T-Mobile and Sprint), to the various reasons the iPhone 4 era was skipped by many consumers, to the weak retention rate on the competing Android platform may all come into play.
First and foremost there’s the arrival of the iPhone 5 on Verizon. Sure, there was a Verizon iPhone 4 a few months ago. But that arrived at a time when those who knew anything about the iPhone knew that the iPhone 4 era was mostly over, and that there would be a Verizon iPhone 5 before long. So even as the Verizon iPhone 4 managed to rack up one-third of all iPhone 4 sales despite coming on board so late in the game (the other two-thirds having been scored by AT&T during its twelve-plus month iPhone 4 run), the bulk of the first-wave impact of the Verizon iPhone will be felt with the iPhone 5 launch. Some in this survey may have also been answering “yes” based on their expectation that the iPhone 5 will also expand to their preferred carrier, be it Sprint or T-Mobile, or their resolve to switch to Verizon at the launch of the iPhone 5 if their preferred carrier doesn’t begin offering it. Carrier expansion alone has the potential to double iPhone marketshare by the time the iPhone 5 era comes and goes, but there has to be more to it.
First and foremost there’s the arrival of the iPhone 5 on Verizon. Sure, there was a Verizon iPhone 4 a few months ago. But that arrived at a time when those who knew anything about the iPhone knew that the iPhone 4 era was mostly over, and that there would be a Verizon iPhone 5 before long. So even as the Verizon iPhone 4 managed to rack up one-third of all iPhone 4 sales despite coming on board so late in the game (the other two-thirds having been scored by AT&T during its twelve-plus month iPhone 4 run), the bulk of the first-wave impact of the Verizon iPhone will be felt with the iPhone 5 launch. Some in this survey may have also been answering “yes” based on their expectation that the iPhone 5 will also expand to their preferred carrier, be it Sprint or T-Mobile, or their resolve to switch to Verizon at the launch of the iPhone 5 if their preferred carrier doesn’t begin offering it. Carrier expansion alone has the potential to double iPhone marketshare by the time the iPhone 5 era comes and goes, but there has to be more to it.
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