A survey of over 4,000 respondents conducted by ChangeWave in the days immediately following the announcement of the iPhone 3GS found that more than 14% plan to purchase an integrated mobile device in the next 90 days — the highest percentage ever recorded by the firm.
Of those who said they plan to make a purchase, a resounding 44% indicated that they plan to buy an iPhone, compared to 23% who said they’ll buy a BlackBerry and 8% who indicated they’ll choose a device made by Palm.
That’s a 14 point jump for Apple since ChangeWave’s last survey in March, which appears to have come directly at the expense of Research in Motion, whose BlackBerry demand fell by the same number of points. Meanwhile, purchase intentions for a device made by Palm doubled following the introduction of the Pre.
Entirely believable. I personally know four or five people who moved to the iPhone recently, and not because of the blowout $99 iPhone 3G. They all purchased the higher-end iPhone 3GS model. To boot, all but one of them are new to AT&T.
I know that’s purely anecdotal (and everyone has their own stories), but I’ve talked to so many people who are considering (finally) moving to the iPhone, mostly from BlackBerry devices. It’s scary to imagine what Apple could be doing if they had more than just AT&T selling the iPhone here in the states.
I think that people are starting to realize the iPhone is a bona fide computing platform, not just a mobile phone. It’s a slow realization, and people probably can’t articulate it, but it’s happening. If you have any doubts about this, the App Store begs to differ.
Check back in three years, and I think you’ll see the iPhone leading the smartphone market, perhaps convincingly (depending on new/alternative carrier developments).
Mobile computing is the 1980’s PC war reincarnate, and this time we’ll see if Apple has learned from its prior missteps.
{ 6 comments… read them below or add one }
I think that people are starting to realize the iPhone is a bona fide computing platform, not just a mobile phone.
Bingo! Yes, it’s a phone. However, I made the switch a year ago because it allows me to communicate with customers via email, check on order status via the web, update customer info via my own website, publish to my own blog and respond to others’ comments all while listening to the iPod and playing with iToot. I liked my 2G model, but the 3GS is far faster to the point where I now force a drop off some WiFi access points because they’re too slow for me.
Totally agree, Paul.
I had a bad experience with the initial iPhone 3G (a perfect storm of a flawed 2.0 iPhone OS release and funky AT&T network voodoo), so I went back to a BB Curve on VZW. However, having recently picked up an iPhone 3GS, I can say that nearly all of my earlier concerns have been completely addressed.
Also, here’s something weird: I no longer need a netbook for the kitchen/living room. I can do all the quick web browsing/tweeting/whatevering from the iPhone.
Fantastic device that’s very much come of age.
I am a long time Palm user (Palm Pilot Professional -> Palm Vx -> Treo 650) and bought the original iPhone when my Treo 650 ran out of steam. My experience with syncing the iPhone with Outlook has not been without issues but I am amazed at all the things I can do with the iPhone so I am willing to overlook some of the minor issues. In fact I am so happy with my iPhone that I just upgraded to an iPhone 3GS. The in-store experience at my local Apple store was great. They sold me a new phone and activated it right on the floor and when I got home, I plugged it in and iTunes completely copied EVERYTHING over to my new 3GS. I was stunned. No lost information, no re-entering of preferences. Nothing. Just amazing. I gave my old iPhone to a friend who was more than happy to use it to replace his BB Pearl. I’m generally not a fan of a closed eco system but I rarely ever have to restart my iPhone due to application issues. I still remember having pop the battery out on my Treo or press the reset button about once a week to get it startup. So yes, I am an iPhone fanboy.
I am becoming one fast.
I do everything with my phone: pay bills, check any website I want, post to my Twitter accounts, write and publish blog posts, play games that are straight out of my childhood (Archon, anyone?), look up what’s near my location at any given instant, use it as a GPS, play music, interface with our Workday deployment, shoot and edit video, take and manipulate pictures (Photogene is incredible, BTW).
As I say to anyone who will listen: it’s more a computer than a mobile phone. People are beginning to realize that.
Personally, I can’t wait for the tethering capability to be available later this year! At this point, the 3GS is only missing two major features as far as I’m concerned:
1) Some type of SD slot or mini USB port to allow transferring large amounts of data quickly and easily.
2) The ability to create a new icon page in the middle of two existing pages. It’s very time consuming to drastically shift icons back a page to make room for new apps and reorganize existing ones.
Things I want:
1. Unified mailbox for all accounts.
2. Background processing. I know Apple kvetches about battery life if this were enabled, but allowing the user to either opt-in to backgrounding (with the battery hit) or select X number of apps for backgrounding seems like a reasonable approach. We don’t work serially with computers these days, as as smartphones get closers to PCs, we don’t want to work that way on them, either.
More to follow.