A Graphic View of Apple Iphones Impact |
The ChangeWave survey of the Apple (AAPL) iPhone's impact on the broader cell phone market is getting a lot of press (see here, here and here) -- perhaps more than it deserves, given the demographic it sampled (more on that later). But it's done us all a favor by boiling the results down to a series of easy-to-read charts, starting with the one here, which shows that less than a month after it was introduced, the iPhone has leaped to top of the phones most likely to be purchased by ChangeWave Alliance members.
The survey, which was conducted July 18-20 and drew 3,003 responses, was especially bad news for Motorola (MOT), which has seen its share of what ChangeWave calls its "future market share" rise and fall over the past two years. The fall-off has been particularly steep since the iPhone was introduced in January. According to Jim Woods and Paul Carton, who wrote the ChangeWave report, the survey results were considerably more upbeat for RIM (RIMM), with the percent of members planning to buy a Blackberry in the next six months up 3% to 13%. RIM also scored well in the user satisfaction chart, although not as well as Apple. Finally, there's the effect the iPhone has had on the bloody war AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) are waging over the cell phone service market. Although Verizon gets considerably higher marks that AT&T in terms of consumer satisfaction (46% vs. 31% very satisfied), Verizon is taking it on the chin in the future buying. So what's not to love about this survey for Apple and AT&T? According to ChangeWave, the iPhone has already grabbed 1% of the cell phone market -- at least among its members. And there's the rub: the "10,000 strategically positioned experts" of the so-called ChangeWave Research Alliance are not a fair sample of the broader cell phone market. In fact, if you read Toby Smith's pitch for his investment group -- "investors [who] build their wealth by specializing in industries and growing marketplaces that are on the right side of transformational change." -- he's clearly aiming squarely for the early adopter group you'd expect to be buying iPhones in the first six months. Add to that the fact that the 3,003 members who answered the survey were self-selected, not scientifically sampled, and you realize that the whole thing should probably be taken with whole shoefull of salt. The charts may be indicators of the direction things are moving, but their numbers are suspect. "Finally, there's the effect the iPhone has had on the turf war AT&T (T) and Verizon (VZ) are waging over the cell phone service market. Although Verizon gets considerably higher marks that T in terms of consumer satisfaction (46% vs. 31% very satisfied), VZ is taking it on the chin in the future buying chart:" If you are going to use stock symbols, please use it consistently through out your sentence, even though I think it is a poor choice to do this. I'd rather that you spell out the company names, at least I don’t think that you are paying to post by the number of characters in a given article? Please excuse for any errors in my writing, i.e. spelling, etc. I don't get paid for posting and I'm running late. Manish writes: "If you are going to use stock symbols, please use it consistently through out your sentence, even though I think it is a poor choice to do this. I'd rather that you spell out the company names..." |