Vintage 2013 Claim Chowder: ‘Is Apple’s iPhone No Longer Cool to Teens?’

I’ve surfaced this 2013 gem from Forbes before, but it feels worth another link in light of that new Piper Sandler survey pegging the iPhone’s market share amongst U.S. teens at a staggering 87 percent:

Ultimately, in the eyes of today’s youth, massive popularity has watered down Apple’s coolness. “Teens are telling us Apple is done,” says Tina Wells of the youth marketing agency Buzz Marketing Group. “Apple has done a great job of embracing Gen X and older [Millennials], but I don’t think they are connecting with Millennial kids. [They’re] all about Surface tablets/laptops and Galaxy.”

This take looks really goofy 10 years later, but at the time, there was a really strong, persistent media narrative that Apple couldn’t thrive without Steve Jobs, and that Samsung in particular was going to surpass them. 2013 was the year of Phil Schiller’s “Can’t innovate any more, my ass” ad lib during the WWDC keynote.

★ Wednesday, 18 October 2023