Have Apple’s own fans hampered their growth?
Everyone knows that Apple have a legion of fans that will stop at nothing to get their paws on the latest tech, often for products with few technical changes and Apple love it. The “hype machine” is something that Apple are famous for, with people getting extremely excited over the next revision of their phones, tablets and laptops every few months. But recent comments from the Apple CEO, Tim Cook (and his right-hand man) have suggested that it’s actually caused an issue for the company recently, with rumours and hype being so great for future products, that current models aren’t selling as expected.
A recent survey undertaken by ChangeWave shows that people are actually more interested in the iPhone5 than it’s older brothers 4 and 4S at the moment, with 14% of people surveyed saying that it was “Highly Likely” that they’d purchase the new revision, whereas in a previous survey from 2010, only 10% of people said the same for the iPhone4. These results are similar in the “Somewhat Likely” column, where the figure stands at 17%, yet only 11.5% said the same for the iPhone4. What this means is that people are simply not buying the current models because there is so much hype and so many rumours surrounding the iPhone5. Why buy the current 4 or 4S model when there will be a new version to blast it out of the water in a couple of months?
Apple’s CFO, Peter Oppenheimer confirmed this by saying:
“Our weekly iPhone sales continue to be impacted by rumors and speculation regarding new products,”
Apple’s CFO, Peter Oppenheimer quoted saying that weekly sales have been affected by “rumours and speculation”.
Though being fair, we can’t pin all of the blame on Apple fans and the hype surrounding the new iPhone5. There were other issues around the world that are causes for concern such as there simply being a slump in sales for the US based company in Europe which accounted for a large slowdown in the overall quarterly report.
Tim Cook, Apple CEO said:
“We see a difference between the countries. The UK was relatively solid at 30 per cent growth, but France, and Greece and Italy were particularly poor, and Germany was also similarly a single-digit positive growth for the quarter. Eastern Europe was strong, materially stronger than Western Europe, but obviously the Western European countries drive the preponderance of the revenue in that segment. So, we’recertainly seeing a slowdown.”
That aside, I fully expect the iPhone 5 to smash sales figures in Q4 this year and we’ll be keeping an eye out on it’s progress and post an entry nearer to the time detailing it’s features and specifications!