Facebook has a polling feature they introduced a few weeks back. They allow people to vote on polls that show up on their home page if they match a certain demographic, as set by the poll creator. I just saw a poll titled:
Are you going to get an iPhone?
The results of the poll was 7% said Yes. This is significantly higher than the 1% Apple is supposedly hoping for. This is especially amazing since the vast majority of college students are probably way too broke to be affirming any intentions on buying an iPhone.
At 18% answering Yes in the 35-49 age group, they account for half the people affirming intentions to buy an iPhone. The 18-24 and 25-34 age group each had about 7% yes responses among their age group. Males dominated Yes votes 3:1.
Yes votes jump up another 8% across the board if AT&T loses exclusivity on the iPhone (people really hate AT&T). Interestingly, 63% voted No, regardless.
The poll sampled 1000 users whom were self-selected, and is by no means scientific. Still, an interesting bullet point for future considerations on Apple’s success.
A few comments to add:
1) I agree – I think it’s pretty clear at this point that iPhone is a big success. Of course, we’ll have to wait and see if it’s something that’s gonna wear off, or keep growing (but i’d bet on the 2nd one)
2) About the survey – I’d say that Facebook user crowd is a very skewed statistical sample. (especially the crowd that self-selects to take surveys) I would assume the interest, and awareness of the product in first place,to be lower in the general population than in the Facebook crowd. In fact, I think college & recent college grads crowd would be the primary target for the iPhone. i.e. My parents probably have no clue what this product is, and are unlikely to ever buy it unless I bust it out as a present, and volunteer to teach them how to use it. Just think of who are the people that care most about phones, and who are the people that buy ipods.
Congratulations, you and I see this as good news for Apple, rather than bad news 🙂
Also worth considering what these numbers mean, revenue wise, in the short term given estimates that facebook has 20M users, and that Apple may get a significant cut of the service revenue.
Also, don’t underestimate the buying power of college students. Yeah, a lot of them are poor, but there are plenty more who still get a nice allowance from mom and dad.
(please excuse the name of my blog, I registered it as a joke, but now I’m getting caught up in my iPhone blogging. I should probably pick a less scammy domain too)
Cheers.