During their annual shareholders meeting, Sprint CEO Dan Hesse said they’re very happy with the iPhone, but admitted that it won’t be profitable for the company until 2015. Sounds crazy, but Hesse says they’re taking the long view, since offering the iPhone will stem the exodus of users going to other carriers just to get their hands on Apple’s smartphone.
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It’s deemed likely that Apple had the top-selling cellphone in Japan this past fall, but how did it do in all of 2011? Quite well, if you go by MMRI’s estimates. The iPhone had 30 percent (almost 7.3 million) of the Land of the Rising Sun’s 24.2 million sales among individual smartphone labels, or nearly double Sharp’s 17.5 percent. Don’t think that Android-powered smartphones like the Aquos SH-12C didn’t make an impact, though: virtually every other smartphone in Japan, 69 percent, was running some flavor of Google’s mobile OS. Apple managed to shake up a sometimes insular overall keitai market as well, having come just short of Fujitsu for the top spot in all cellphones. Researchers are expecting the smartphone space in Japan to grow by a healthy 15 percent in 2012, although it’s still a wildcard as to whether or not KDDI’s iPhone support will keep Apple riding high for another year.
iPhone was Japan’s best-selling smartphone in 2011, Android more than comfy as well originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 10 May 2012 17:47:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Musubo has a line of iPhone accessories inspired by Tokyo street fashion, and they are now available in the US at Amazon, GoWireless, and Wireless Zone.? On the left is the MatchBook Pro case for iPhone 4/4S.? It’s made of polycarbonate and features a built-in kickstand that looks like a row of matchsticks.? The match [...]
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COMMENTARY | “I have an iPhone, but it’s just a phone to me,” the person I was speaking with said. (Perhaps he knew I was an Android fan.) “I’m not, like, fanatical about it or anything.”
In saying that, he was trying to set himself apart from the stereotypical Apple fan — the one who ignores reason, evidence, and common sense. Who buys Apple products to attract members of their preferred gender. Who’s duped by marketing, and keeps being duped over and over again, year after year. And who then has the audacity to lecture fans of non-Apple products on how their manufacturers are doing things all wrong.
All of these traits are annoying, to be sure. But the most annoying thing about Apple fans?
They’re right
And I mean that by basically any definition you can think of. What’s the most valuable company in the world, as of a few months ago? Apple. (Its biggest competitor for the title was not Google or Microsoft, but Exxon.) Which one company has been making two-thirds of all the profit to be had in the whole smartphone would? Apple. And its record quarterly net profit of $13 billion these past few months can buy an awful lot of ads.
But what about those ads? Aren’t they style over substance? You tell me. Here’s a sample of its recent iPhone ads. Do you know what they all have in common? They show people actually using the product, and it works just like in real life. Compare and contrast with this infamous Verizon Droid ad, which talks about trading “hairdo for can-do” but is basically nonsense sexist imagery. Or the one that shows Droids being shot out of stealth fighters. Or a Motorola Xoom transforming into a spaceship.
The Droid was supposed to be the anti-iPhone. If the opposite of the iPhone is vapid imagery and form over function, what does that say about Apple’s products?
That they don’t work as well
Or else they supposedly have an “Apple tax,” which apparently only applies to the Mac since the iPhone and iPad are priced extremely competitively. (They should be; Apple has so much cash, it can buy up the whole supply of the special components it needs, according to Philip Elmer-DeWitt of CNN Money.)
But that tax is willingly paid, year after year, by people who know the alternatives. And every year, fans of the Android- or Windows-based alternatives rant and rail at Apple fans for not buying those instead.
They don’t for a number of reasons. Because they’re already tied into the Apple ecosystem, with iTunes and iCloud and the App Store. Because they really do like how Apple’s products make them feel. And because, when they bought a Mac or iPad, they felt for the first time like this thing was designed just for them … not to fill a certain market niche or make a certain sales target. Like the people who made it cared about it, enough to do their best.
That’s something that many have never experienced anywhere else, at least not in the tech world. And until the fans — and makers — of other products realize that, Apple’s just going to get bigger and bigger. Until it’s too late for anyone else to compete on an even playing field.
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A policeman tries to drag away people who refused to leave the Apple Store in Beijing Friday, Jan. 13, 2012. An angry crowd shouted and threw eggs at Apple’s Beijing flagship store after it failed to open on schedule Friday to sell the popular new iPhone 4S model. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
A policeman tries to drag away people who refused to leave the Apple Store in Beijing Friday, Jan. 13, 2012. An angry crowd shouted and threw eggs at Apple’s Beijing flagship store after it failed to open on schedule Friday to sell the popular new iPhone 4S model. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
A Chinese man in a red hood reacts since he is pushed away by police officers after he refused to leave the Apple Store as stains of eggs are left in its glass wall in the background in Beijing Friday, Jan. 13, 2012. An angry crowd shouted and threw eggs at Apple’s Beijing flagship store after it failed to open on schedule Friday to sell the popular smartphones. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
Stains of an egg are seen on the iPhone 4S logo on the Apple store’s glass wall in Beijing Friday, Jan. 13, 2012. An angry crowd shouted and threw eggs at Apple’s Beijing flagship store after it failed to open on schedule Friday to sell the popular smartphones. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
Chinese people wait outside an Apple Store to buy the iPhone 4S model in Beijing Friday, Jan. 13, 2012. An angry crowd shouted and threw eggs at Apple’s Beijing flagship store after it failed to open on schedule Friday to sell the popular smartphones. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
A policeman, center left, tries to disperse the crowd outside an Apple store in Beijing Friday, Jan. 13, 2012. An angry crowd shouted and threw eggs at Apple’s Beijing flagship store after it failed to open on schedule Friday to sell the popular new iPhone 4S model. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)
BEIJING (AP) ? Angry customers and gangs of scalpers threw eggs at Apple Inc.’s Beijing store Friday after the iPhone 4S launch there was canceled due to concerns over the crowd’s size.
Apple reacted to the outburst by postponing iPhone 4S sales in its mainland China stores to protect customers and employees. The phone still will be sold online and through its local carrier.
The incident highlighted Apple’s huge popularity in China and the role of middlemen who buy up limited supplies of iPhones and other products or smuggle them from abroad for resale to Chinese gadget fans at a big markup.
Hundreds of customers including migrant workers hired by scalpers in teams of 20 to 30 waited overnight in freezing weather at the Apple store in a shopping mall in Beijing’s east side Sanlitun district.
The crowd erupted after the store failed to open on schedule at 7 a.m. Some threw eggs and shouted at employees through the windows.
A person with a megaphone announced the sale was canceled. Police ordered the crowd to leave and sealed off the area with yellow tape. Employees posted a sign saying the iPhone 4S was out of stock.
“We were unable to open our store at Sanlitun due to the large crowd, and to ensure the safety of our customers and employees, iPhone will not be available in our retail stores in Beijing and Shanghai for the time being,” said Apple spokeswoman Carolyn Wu.
The iPhone 4S quickly sold out at other Apple stores in China, Wu said. She said the phone still will be sold in China through Apple’s online store, its local carrier China Unicom Ltd. and authorized resellers.
Wu declined to comment on what Apple might know about scalpers buying iPhones for resale.
China is Apple’s fastest-growing market and “an area of enormous opportunity,” CEO Tim Cook said in October. He said quarterly sales were up nearly four times over a year earlier and accounted for one-sixth of Apple’s global sales.
Apple’s China stores are routinely mobbed for the release of new products.
The company has its own stores only in Beijing and Shanghai, with a handful of authorized retailers in other cities, so middlemen who buy iPhones and resell them in other areas can make big profits, said Wang Ying, who follows the mobile phone market for Analysys International, a research firm in Beijing.
“Apple is making a lot of money, so it is not too concerned about the scalpers,” Wang said.
Wang and other industry analysts said the size of the underground trade and price markups are unclear.
In Shanghai, stores limited iPhone 4S sales to two per customer. Several hundred people were waiting when the stores opened, bundled up against the cold. Some passed the time playing mahjong.
Buyers included 500 older people from neighboring Jiangsu province who were hired by the boss of a mobile phone market, the newspaper Oriental Morning Post said. They arrived aboard an 11-bus convoy and were paid 150 yuan ($15) each.
Online bulletin boards were filled with comments about Friday’s buying frenzy, many complaining about or ridiculing the scalpers.
An Apple contractor manufactures iPhones in China, but new models are released in other countries first. That has fueled a thriving “gray market” in China for phones smuggled in from Hong Kong and other markets.
Last May, the Sanlitun store was closed for several hours after a scuffle between an employee and a customer during the release of the iPhone 4, the previous model in the series.
Customers began gathering Thursday afternoon outside the Sanlitun store. People in the crowd said the number grew to as many as 2,000 overnight but many left when word spread the store would not open. About 350 people remained when the protest erupted after 7 a.m.
“On the one hand there is poor organization and on the other there were just too many people,” said a man outside the Sanlitun store Friday, who would give only his surname, Miao. “I don’t think they prepared well enough.”
Another man who refused to give his name said he was a migrant laborer who was paid 100 yuan ($15) to wait in line overnight.
Others in the crowd said scalpers had organized groups of 20 to 30 migrant workers to buy phones or hold places in line. Organizers held colored balloons aloft to identify themselves to their workers.
Others said they were waiting to buy the phone for themselves.
“I just like the 4S,” said Zhu Xiaodong, a Beijing resident. He said he was upgrading from the previous iPhone 4 model.
Sales in China began three months after the iPhone 4S had its global debut Oct. 14 in the United States and six other countries.
The delay between the release of Apple products in the United States and in China has yet to affect its reputation with Chinese customers, said Ted Dean, managing director of BDA China Ltd., a research firm in Beijing.
For other products, such a delay “sort of gives the impression here that you’re not giving the Chinese consumer a fair shake,” Dean said. “But demand and that ‘cool factor’ is so huge for Apple products that you don’t hear that about them.”
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Associated Press writer David Wivell, researchers Zhao Liang and Yu Bing, all in Beijing, and AP Business Writer Elaine Kurtenbach in Shanghai contributed to this report.
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Online:
Apple Inc.: http:://www.apple.com
Associated Press
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Reports in Apple’s Support Community suggest some users running on older iOS 3.1.3 firmware are no longer able to download apps from the App Store after Apple pushed out an update on December 16th. Specifically, when users jump into the App Store and try to download any…
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Source: http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/TheIphoneBlog/~3/XqNUTHfW3c8/story01.htm
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