Piper Jaffray analyst Michael Olson yesterday shared a new 1,500 person study he performed as to why people opted not to purchase a new iPhone. The results aren’t particularly surprising, noting three primary reasons for the hold off.
The primary reason that prevented people from upgrading recently is because their current phone “works just fine”, which accounted for 44% of the responses. This is something we’ve heard often, especially considering the long life often accompanying Apple products.
The second most frequently cited reason was that the new iPhone was simply “too expensive,” with 31% of the respondents choosing this as their answer.
Lastly, the third most popular reason (with 8%), was that they prefer a larger screen than is currently offered on the iPhone X. An “Other” category made up the last 17% of respondents.
Considering what is rumored for Apple’s iPhone lineup later this year, Apple could address concerns of 39% of those prospective buyers by introducing a new larger-screen iPhone X, as well as a new lower-cost model.
The takeaway from our survey is that a larger screen and lower priced option would address the concerns of 40% of iPhone owners that have not upgraded. Despite investor uncertainty around iPhone X, we recommend owning AAPL on potential for a super-long cycle driven by a wider array of ‘X-gen’ devices.
The study is certainly interesting and it’s intriguing to see values put to these oft-cited reasons. However, it doesn’t reveal anything particularly groundbreaking and the sample size isn’t especially large.
Apple is widely thought to be debuting a new iPhone SE, a second-generation iPhone X as well as a new larger version of iPhone X later this year.
What do you make of these survey results?
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