Right. She actually like the way the Windows phone hardware looked the best -- it's colorful and different looking than everything else. But I think she would have bought an iPhone to be honest just based on name recognition if Apple would offer competitive sizes. With the way it was presented in the store, it had as much sales sex appeal as the aging netbook display to one side of it and the feature phone display behind it.
The iPhone 5 just absolutely mystifies me, they had a 4 and 4s for sale there too but unless you hold the phones right next to one another and see the extra row of icons on the screen, they're virtually indistinguishable as products to most people, yet the 5 costs much more. To a nontechnical buyer it seems inexplicable that this extra row of icons costs $100-$200 difference in price. Even digging into the specs, I couldn't really make a case for the 5 over the 4 series without getting into technical specs she didn't care about. Her comments were "the 5 is the new one, but I'm getting price gouged for it, and the 4 is on the way out...and these other phones are really popular too"
In the store, with all of the important context clues that stores put around flagship products, the iPhone section felt like it was selling to a market that was quickly disappearing. Like selling incredibly nice horsewhips at a car dealership.
Comments
You might be reading too much into the comment.
For both your and parent's anecdote, screen size was the primary determinant for this user. I wouldn't be surprised if that's common.
It's a good reminder that many people don't buy a device based on the topics we discuss a lot like openness, lock-in, carriers, and fragmentation.
Right. She actually like the way the Windows phone hardware looked the best -- it's colorful and different looking than everything else. But I think she would have bought an iPhone to be honest just based on name recognition if Apple would offer competitive sizes. With the way it was presented in the store, it had as much sales sex appeal as the aging netbook display to one side of it and the feature phone display behind it.
The iPhone 5 just absolutely mystifies me, they had a 4 and 4s for sale there too but unless you hold the phones right next to one another and see the extra row of icons on the screen, they're virtually indistinguishable as products to most people, yet the 5 costs much more. To a nontechnical buyer it seems inexplicable that this extra row of icons costs $100-$200 difference in price. Even digging into the specs, I couldn't really make a case for the 5 over the 4 series without getting into technical specs she didn't care about. Her comments were "the 5 is the new one, but I'm getting price gouged for it, and the 4 is on the way out...and these other phones are really popular too"
In the store, with all of the important context clues that stores put around flagship products, the iPhone section felt like it was selling to a market that was quickly disappearing. Like selling incredibly nice horsewhips at a car dealership.
Even Nintendo sells two sizes of their portables.