The Latest Knock on Apple: Too Many People Buying iPhones Other Than the 5

Chris O’Brien, writing for the LA Times, “Consumers’ Shift to Older iPhones Raises Concerns on Wall Street”:

How strange to think that Vicki Macchiavello’s decision to buy an iPhone after years of using a BlackBerry could be bad news for Apple. And yet, because the Oakland resident opted to buy a cheaper, older iPhone 4 rather than the latest, pricier iPhone 5, she represents a trend that has become a growing concern on Wall Street.

In recent months, such an unusually large proportion of consumers are opting to buy older iPhone models that some analysts have begun to wonder whether Apple has lost its ability to create new versions that have enough dazzle to justify their high prices.

Framed this way, Apple can’t win. If they only sold the iPhone 5, they’d get dinged for not addressing the middle and lower tiers of the market. In fact, even now, with the iPhone 4 and 4S on the market, Apple is frequently criticized for not having an even cheaper iPhone — something for the no-contract market.

But so now when people buy the iPhone 4 and 4S, it’s a sign that something is wrong with the iPhone 5? If selling the iPhone 4 and 4S to new customers were bad for Apple, they wouldn’t sell them. It’s not complicated. Read the article — it’s quite obvious that if the iPhone 4 were not available free-with-contract, this woman would have bought something other than an iPhone that was. She wasn’t going to spring for a $199 iPhone 5.

★ Monday, 29 April 2013