Apple products now found in half of all American dwellings

Once the nerdy niche player, Apple is now officially mainstream: the majority of American households own at least one device from Cupertino, according to a CNBC survey of gadget ownership. The survey found that the typical Apple owner still tends to be male, college-educated, younger and lives on the West Coast. (CNBC …

[Anonymous Coward]

Sample size?

836 people out of a population of how many?? Over 310million? Pathetic.

Presumably this sample had already agreed to be used in surveys, as CNBC had their phone numbers? That suggests to me that those people are not representative of the vast majority of people, who would hang up seconds after being asked if they wanted to take part in a survey...

[toadwarrior]

Re: Sample size?

Yeah they must be wrong because we all know it's not like the Mac's sales keep going up, they own the tablet market or have a huge chunk of the phone market. So how could they be getting close to the claims of this survey.

[Peddler]

Re: Sample size?

If you count iPod Shuffles that have been through the laundry and kept in a drawer instead of thrown away...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Sample size?

Generally these are a list of people who are demographically representative and receive compensation for their participation. It's a widely established practice, and statistically supported in terms of validity. However, the comprehensive and rather expensive nature of making sure this group is perfectly representative and equally redundant enough that there are no single points of failure rather limits the number of these groups. I can only think of two off hand.

Source: Consult in market research occasionally, and know several of the bigger trick cyclists in the biz.

Anonymous cause I just admitted to doing market research.

[Mike Judge]

Re: Sample size?

Indeed, I also bet they carried out the survey outside starbucks.

Sometimes the sheer stupidity of the human race astounds me, right now is one of those moments, there are clearly people that think that extrapolating data from 800 people is valid thing to do, and that it's newsworthy...

Who wants to bet who financed this survey???? Back in the day, many sites would have been the first people to call this out as utter bullshit, but now they just tow-the-line, too scared of the lost advertising revenue. This is why the internet is so fucked up.

[Graham Wilson]

@A.C. -- Re: Sample size? Thumbs are split evenly!

Thumbs are split evenly!

So the report must be correct!

>;-)

[Graham 24]

Snake Cult reference

Does that mean that the only way to stop it is to get Arnie to chop off Tim Cook's head?

[JDX]

Amazing

Dodgy sample or not, it is simply incredible how massively and how quickly Apple have done this. And show no sign of slowing down just yet.

Still can't decide if buying Apple shares is crazy.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Amazing

>Still can't decide if buying Apple shares is crazy.

Apple don't think so, afterall they just spent $10 billion on their own stock......there's nothing even vaguely worrying about a non-essential consumer electronics company being worth the GDP of Switzerland......

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Amazing

It must be crazy. They can't keep going up forever...

...can they?

Anyone suffering from long-term fanboi-ism should check out this site which shows you how much your stock would be worth today, if you'd bought Apple shares to the same value, instead of your first Apple device.

Mind you, given my first fruit-flavoured product was an 8500/120 Powermac, which I took out a £1500 loan to buy 2nd hand back in 1996, I find said site more depressing than anything else.

[Anonymous Coward]

Amazing

for a third-world country

[John I'm only dancing]

My sample

They are in 100 per cent of UK dwellings if the survey of my house is anything to go by...in fact, every house has at least eight. (Mac Pro, eMac, Power PC (original 6000), iPhone and four iPods). Market must be saturated now.

[Geoff Campbell]

Re: My sample

It also depends on how you phrase the question. My household also owns an Apple product, and had two until a couple of weeks ago. But I just sold the Lisa, and the Apple IIe will probably be going soon, too.

GJC

[Anonymous Coward]

Can Anna Leach

stop now with the rather stupid 'Foxconn rebrander' description.?

It isn't true and it makes her sound like a juvenile idiot.

(Perhaps she is - and if she is, she shouldn't be writing on El Reg)

No scrap that last line. if you stopped juvenile idots posting there would hardly be any comments at all.

[Silverburn]

Re: Can Anna Leach

A thought occurs...can you QED your own posts?

[Random Handle]

Re: Can Anna Leach

>stop now with the rather stupid 'Foxconn rebrander' description.?

I also object to this - they mostly are rebranding Samsung kit these days.

>if you stopped juvenile idots posting there would hardly be any comments at all.

I had to look idot up, must be getting old:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=idot

[Anonymous Coward]

figures

iPod was just rubbish! iPhone was innovative and desirable to some (like 5 years ago), iPad is just as FUGLY as the rest of the "i" devices. 6 years later all of the sheep are chasing FUGLY devices to buy somes status.

Never forgot, the populace are SHEEP and will follow any trend that makes them think they are ahead of the game and not actually a piece of the machine as in reality.

[Silverburn]

Re: figures

Fantastic. Don't call us...we'll call you.

[Armando 123]

Re: figures

You may be right, but the market doesn't agree with you, apparently.

Personally, I liked the iPod: dead easy to use (even my technophobe mother, in her 70s, picked one up and used it without instructions), better made than competitors in the day, the firewire vs usb1 was a huge win, well made with few breakable parts, simple integration with the computer and iTunes and iTunes store, as sturdy as a brick chicken house, and felt good in the hand. It also fit into my shirt pocket when I wasn't using it, unlike some other MP3 players of the day. It wasn't perfect, but overall it beat the socks off anything else at that time.

The iPhone changed the smartphone game. Others have caught up, to an extent, and in some areas have moved ahead, but OVERALL you can use the iPod description above to describe it.

And IIRC, Apple generally scores at #1 or #2 in product reliability and product satisfaction in Consumer Report surveys of a particular type of product (music player, phone, laptop, etc). You can ascribe it to sheep, but the consumer today is pretty cynical and ready to qvetch about problems with anything. Maybe you need to step back and look at some numbers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: figures

This kind of "aaargh wont this people listen to ME I alone know what is better for them" rant is getting old.

[MacRat]

Re: figures

You're just upset because you are the only kid in class with a Zune player and a Kin phone.

[Armando 123]

Foxconn rebrander

As long as we're going with such terms, can we refer to journalists and bloggers as "drunk socialist hack who couldn't be trusted with snake control in Ireland"?

[Sean Timarco Baggaley]

Re: Foxconn rebrander

@Armando 123:

That's a bit long-winded. You need something shorter and snappier for today's sound-bite societies.

How about "Press Release Rewriter"?

[Anonymous Coward]

"CNBC collected no personality data so other fanboy stereotypes cannot be confirmed."

I lol'd, but damn... would have been nice :)

- goes to Starbucks at least once a week 60%

- owns no less than 3 Coldplay albums 30%

- put a bird on something 15%

- uses the word ironic on a regular basis 80%

El Reg, I beg you... you need to do one of these to confirm/deny our smart phone stereotypes - and not just for iThingies.. for Fandroids, Microphonies, Berrybois and the ever-elusive Burningmen.

- Sent from my iThingy

[Alan W. Rateliff, II]

Forget the article, relish the reference

Steve Jobs as Thulsa Doom? Sorry, that whingy voice of his is (was) no match for James Earl Jones.

Could you imagine Jobs voicing Darth Vader? He really would've sounded like Anakin from Eps I, II, and III.

Paris, flesh is power.

[jake]

In other news ...

95.5% of all American homes have a red & black can of McCormick brand pre-ground pepper in their spice cabinet.

Doesn't mean that McCormick brand pre-ground pepper tastes of anything other than dusty kitchen corner sweepings, alas. What it actually means is that 98.5% of all American home cooks don't really know what food tastes like.

[JEDIDIAH]

Re: In other news ...

I think the number for Apple products is WAY too high. Consider the distribution of percentages across various demographic groups. Some of course are going to have less penetration than others simply because Apple products are "luxury" goods and a lot of households simply don't have the money to waste on products of that kind regardless of what kind of logo is on it.

iPod/iPhone likely represents the bulk of the numbers and iPhones are already being undercut by Androids.

iPads aren't numerous enough yet and probably are secondary Apple devices. Apple's computing products simply don't have enough penetration to be relevant to this kind of study.

Even in the suburban conspicuous consumption demographic, there may not be large enough numbers to justify generalizing 50% to the population at large. The 50% number probably is for the suburban conspicuous consumption demographic most likely to even have Apple products.

[Aaron Em]

Re: In other news ...

And you've got a big ol' canister of sea salt in yours, don't you...

[JEDIDIAH]

Re: In other news ...

No. Not mere sea salt. That pink snooty stuff from Hawaii.

The more expensive the better.

[jake]

Re: In other news ...

The only "pink salt" here is used for curing meat, TYVM.

Yes, I use sea salt of various descriptions, and various other specialty salts, mostly as finishing salts. My go-to cooking/brining/rubbing salt is Diamond Crystal "kosher"[1] salt. My table salt[2] is a 50-50 mix of DC & Baleine brand "fine sea salt".

If you can't tell the difference between course Baleine, my own Fleur de sel[4], and Maldon salt when used as finishing salt on your steak, I feel ever so sorry for you. Perhaps stop smoking for a couple years & get your sense of taste back?

[1] More properly, that's "koshering", but who am I to quibble.

[2] I can't stand the metallic flavo(u)r of iodized[3] salt.

[3] I get plenty of iodine from seaweed[4], TYVM.

[4] Both harvested by the Wife & I a couple times a year just South of Fort Ross, on the California coast ... We also harvest some seaweed on Tomales Bay, with the permission of my friends at The Hog Island Oyster Company.

[Paw Bokenfohr]

"Foxconn rebrander"

Really? Seems a little excessive. If you were talking about ZyXEL, or Belkin, or something like that I might think you had a point, but I think it's perhaps stretching the Apple-bashing a little far.

[Steven Roper]

I like "Foxconn rebrander"...

It highlights what Apple really is: a parasitic intellectual property law firm, not an IT company.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: I like "Foxconn rebrander"...

Finally, proof of that famed "reality distortion field". Pity it works for both sides.

[Figgus]

Market penetration

Nearly 100% of American households have a toilet, and nearly 100% of those toilets have had sold waste "dumped" into them.

Significant market penetration doesn't mean it's not shit.

[b166er]

Would that be cider or apple pie?

[John Savard]

And Here I Thought

And here I thought that Apple products were just for the "top 1%" of income-earners. But then, some models of the iPod are probably affordable by proletarians.

[dssf]

Not where *I* live...

As far as I know, of the 8 of us in one household, nobody owns ANYthing from Apple. Two couples downstairs, 4 singles upstairs. Varying levels of income.

[dssf]

Re: Not where *I* live...

It's a FACT, down-thumbing human/RNG frack. How can you conscientiously down-thumb something you cannot prove one way or the other? My landlord who DID own an iPhone moved with her boyfriend out and they were replaced by 4 older people.

Good GODs, the down-thumb should come with a "Justify downthumb and unmask your handle and e-mail address for credibility" function.

Jeeze, the mentality of some people (human or random number generator going after posts...)

[Anonymous Coward]

It's not that I don't like your post...

...but after reading your response to self I thought it would be funny to downvote the original.

Sorry, I guess it is Friday and we're both drunk (how could you conscientiously write that!), but alcohol impairs our judgments differently? Hic.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Not where *I* live...

Erm. Firstly the folk in other apartments are not in your household. Secondly, with. Sample size of 8, what the heck is your point?

[dssf]

Re: Not where *I* live...

Where i live is in my household... One street number, no unit or apt nbr. Same entry, shared storage and laundry.

As to the other comment, the point is that some of these polls are pointless. All that story did was adcertise more apple. The pollsters could have just monitored train and bus passengers and reported on apparent users based on devices in hands being apple devices amont non-apple devices visible.

The other point is that ... Well, given the hostility, what IS the point?

[JDX]

Re: Not where *I* live...

I think it's more the sheer boredom your post inspires, that you think the world want s to know what people in your house own.

Post it on twitter instead.

[Levente Szileszky]

Hahaha, "Foxconn rebrander", very good...

...and very true, indeed.

[JDX]

Re: Hahaha, "Foxconn rebrander", very good...

Apart from the facts. Apple design the product for Foxconn to build. Foxconn build Apple's product for them, Apple don't rebadge a generic Foxconn product.

Unless you are aware of the other people also selling 2048x1536 tablets, of course.

[404]

Re: Hahaha, "Foxconn rebrander", very good...

I was honestly surprised at Comdex, years and years ago, to find that Foxconn made Intel-branded server motherboards. Shattered a few (mis)conceptions I had...

Just saying...

[Doug Glass]

Just damn!

In the minority again.

[Mikel]

The important part about this

It isn't in the article, but the important part about this is that it's going to be just about impossible to maintain the myth that Apple products are too expensive for normal people, or are in some other way unsatisfactory. Since everybody has one or two, or their friends are using them all the time. That's a pretty big deal.