Is The Rising Popularity Of The iPod Touch Cutting Into iPhone Sales?
According to early reports, the iPod Touch was a hot seller over the holidays. At the same time, sales of the mighty iPhone have been slowing in some places. Is there a connection between the two?
BusinessWeek says the Touch’s good fortune is partly a matter of economics and partly its functionality. While the iPod Touch is priced from $229 to $399, it is more affordable than the iPhone, as consumers aren’t saddled with a pricey monthly phone plan. Plus, with the growing number of games on Apple’s App Store, the iPod Touch is presenting buyers with an alternative to a Nintendo DS or Sony (NYSE: SNE) PSP.
Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers partner Matt Murphy, who manages its $100 million iFund for App Store developers, told BusinessWeek that aside from the Touch becoming a “legitimate gaming platform,” young people are using it for social networking and other applications. He added that for some people, “it’s becoming a computer replacement.” BusinessWeek also references a note from BMO Capital Markets analyst Keith Bachman that found Canadian telco Rogers Communications sold 130,000 iPhones in the December quarter, significantly lower than 235,000 in the previous quarter. We won’t know the latest iPhone sales numbers in the U.S. until AT&T’s latest earnings are released in at the end of the month.
Another interesting datapoint on the rising popularity of the Touch comes from mobile ad network AdMob. Its has released December figures Thursday, and while our usual caveat that these figures are from only one vendor still stands, they show a jump in the number of ads it served up to iPod Touch users—from 86 million in November to 292 million in December. The requests doubled overnight on Christmas, and remained strong throughout the close of the month.
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Comments (8)
Jan 9, 2009 9:15 AM
Agree with your assessment. My 17 yr old watches TV with the iPod Touch running Meebo in his right hand, and his cell in his left. Watching him gives me a headache :)
Jan 9, 2009 10:17 AM
All our next gen is focus more on tech then anything else, back in the days, tech people were called nerds, now the more tech you owned, the cooler you are
Jan 9, 2009 12:36 PM
My wife wanted an iPhone for Christmas, so I checked out the options. It would have cost us at least another $50 a month to switch to the iPhone on AT&T. It is not the initial cost of the iPhone, but rather the ongoing monthly cost, and the pain that is AT&T. She received both a new RAZR (They actually consider this a smartphone?), and an iPod Touch.
Jan 9, 2009 12:45 PM
I am right there with you. I wondered about this from the beginning.
BTW, Anne, we have always been called geeks. We still are, but now we have geek sheik!
Just call me when you can’t get your text, email, or phone working and your jock boyfriend is too busy watching the football game to learn how to use the remote!
Jan 9, 2009 1:23 PM
Plus you can sort of turn your iPod Touch into a phone with a VoIP app—though of course this only works if you’re always in a wi-fi network.
Jan 9, 2009 3:29 PM
Bought a touch instead of the iPhone because it has just about all the advantages and so much less overall cost. It is a little limited by having wifi only but new hot spots spring up daily. Only things that would cause me to upgrade would be a better camera, full gps, better battery life and a cheap gsm plan (with no data), for now really happy with the touch
Jan 9, 2009 6:35 PM
I want my phone to be a phone and nothing else. I also have an iPod touch.
Call me too political, but after AT&T handed out privacy data to the Bushies without a FISA Court Order combined with their campaign against net neutrality, I wouldn’t give AT&T a cup of water if they were on fire. I might give them a gallon of water if they were drowning, though. I simply do not do business with companies that I know are actively working against my interests.
AT&T, really SBC after they bought the carcass of AT&T long distance, is a deal breaker for me. It’s also way too expensive. There isn’t a phone in the world worth $70/month if I had Bill Gates’ money.
Jan 10, 2009 1:00 PM
Apple has the bases covered ... if folks find an iPhone too onerous dollar-wise, they can opt for an iPod touch. Brilliant.
Jan 12, 2009 3:24 PM
What we need for ipod Touch third version, is :
- GPS embelded
- camera and video (include a microphone)
People prefer to use IM than cellphone, it is less intrusif
Jan 12, 2009 4:37 PM
I loved the rumors that apple would announce a bigger screen ipod touch, I’d love to buy an ipod touch with 2x the height and 2x the weight and costing an extra $100 or so.
Although the $250 netbooks from bestbuy are tempting too.