I used to work as a market surveyor in a mall and, during my time as such, I learned just how horribly unreliable market surveys actually are. Pretty much everything corporations understand about us comes from the kind of people who hang out in a mall and think an hour of their time is worth five bucks. So I’m a wee bit skeptical of the idea that teens are, like, totally hating Apple.
The survey, from Buzz Marketing, well, read it for yourself:
“Teens are telling us Apple is done,” says Tina Wells of the youth marketing agency Buzz Marketing Group. “Apple has done a great job of embracing Gen X and older [Millennials], but I don’t think they are connecting with Millennial kids. [They’re] all about Surface tablets/laptops and Galaxy.”
The Galaxy? Yeesh, teenagers really are idiots.
That said, they’re also pretty much worthless as an audience when it comes to tech. As a rule, teenagers don’t have the cash to buy high-end gear; they take what they’re given. In fact, some surveys indicate that teens don’t like Apple because their parents unload the iPhone on them and then go get a new one every model year, and they’re sulking about how Mom and Dad have the cool phone and they’re stuck with the previous version of the machine that has changed the twenty-first century.
This is pretty much borne out by the sales numbers. The Surface isn’t doing badly, but it’s dwarfed by iPad sales. The Galaxy line of phones actually sells enormously, but this is because they’re dirt cheap, not because they’re the best phone on the market. Heck, they’re not even the best Android phone. So, really, teenagers, welcome to reality: Nobody cares what you think and you have no actual influence over the world anyway.
Although we have to admit… suddenly those rumors about a dirt-cheap iPhone make a lot more sense.