If this is the look of waining popularity, I’m sure Apple is quite content to let it continue.
Piper Jaffray’s 25th bi-annual teens and devices survey just came out. And in continuing what has been a trend over the last few surveys, Apple comes out on top. Although Android OS smartphones made some (very) small gains, the iPhone is far and away the most desired smartphone on the market among our nation’s bright future.
According to the survey, 48% of teens already own an iPhone. That’s up from 40% in October (the last time this survey was published), which is in turn up from 34% in the spring of 2012. So, in a year, we’re looking at a 14% increase in the iPhone’s market share among teens.
And 62% of teens said that their next device purchase will be an iPhone.
On the Android side, 23% expressed future plans to buy a smartphone, which is up 1% from last October.
Overall preference for the OS – 59% of teens say they’re likely to buy an iOS device (unchanged) compared to 21% likely to buy an Android OS device (up 1%).
Proclamations of the iPhone’s decline in popularity among today’s youth have been coming for a couple of years now. Upon the launch of the iPhone 4S, you may remember HTC President Martin Fitcher said that the iPhone is a dad phone, and that kids don’t find them cool anymore. Then, a couple of months later, a Nokia product manager called iPhone’s “black mono boxes” and said that the youth are fed up with the ubiquitous Apple product.
More recently, you may have read one of the many articles discussing the iPhone’s loss of cool with teens. “Teens are telling us Apple is done,” said one youth marketing director.
Sure, the U.S. smartphone market still has room to grow. And that means that all types of devices have room to grow. And with the gains we’ve seen recently from manufacturers like Samsung, it’s possible that Apple loses some of its dominance over the next few survey periods. But for now, it’s clear that teens love their iPhones.
[Image via heyheygig, Flickr]