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I disagree, though based on the attitude of your comment I'm not sure if you'll take my point. Here in Dublin, at least, iPhones are becoming extremely popular, even with the losertechnicians of the world. Businessmen with no tech skills are replacing Blackberries with them, teenagers are flocking to get them, and there are even dodgy-looking iPhone accessory shops in bad neighbourhoods. Over here, since around the start of this summer, the iPhone 4 has been available for free on a 40 euro per month contract with unlimited data and enough minutes/texts for the vast majority of people, on pretty much every network. That's a really good deal, and a huge number of people bought into it, figuring that they spend at least that on credit anyway. When the iPad 2 launched over here, there was a period of 8 months where you could not find ANY, at all, even in the authorized resellers that Apple likes the most. At any one time there might have been one for sale in the whole city. Android is gaining momentum here too, and I don't know figures for any of this, but I definitely haven't seem them on as many non-hackers as I have iPhones. In conclusion, no, the people who have iPhones are not the Apple-savvy hipsters. At least in this city. |
The first wave are the tech enthusiasts, these people are not big app buyers but are interested in finding a good SSH tool, or an mail client that supports PGP. These were the main customers of the first iPhone.
I'd say we've been in the second wave for the last couple years. These people are seeing TV the ads and are curious. Their friends buy iPhones, it makes sense for them too as well. They're not "hackers", just people that are willing to try apps. These are your Angry Birds players, and where the main revenue comes from.
The third and final wave will be moms and general folk who will never sync with iTunes. It's those people that are never going to buy an app because they won't know what an app is. And that's fine, they'll like how their phone talks to them and how they can Facetime to their kids.
I don't mean to say that all iPhone 1 users are "hackers", just that a higher percentage of them were than are now iPhone 4S users. A lot of those people likely went off to Android in the recent years, anyhow.