Piper Jaffrey's Survey and My Own - on the 3G

On Appleinsider today a Piper Jaffrey survey taken on launch day offered a number of observations about who the market for the 3G iPhone was. I did a similar survey (although obviously much more informally) in my crowd on Friday and came up with similar results. (Verifying either that PJ's survey was excellent or that the crowds in Pasadena were similar to New York.)

Over the course of the day my survey was considerably smaller but since I was there for more than five hours I had a lot of time to ask questions. Part of the reason I choose to stay in line was because it presented such a wonderful opportunity to look at this as an economist. I spoke with perhaps 50 people in line. (I overheard comments from perhaps another 25 people.) The PJ survey was almost 4 times that at 283. In the Pasadena line the predominant phone desired was the larger model - although compared to the opening group for the original phone - the spread was considerably closer. I found few if any people who wanted the 4G version 1 but about 25% of the people I spoke with wanted the 8 G version of the 3G.

The split between people who would use this as a iPod and not - was about even in the PJ survey. As I spoke with people in line a good percentage of them were going to continue to use their iPod - that is perhaps 60-40. The PJ survey found that AT&T customers made up about 62% of the buyers, in my line the percentage of current AT&T users was less than 50%. The switchers were primarily from Verizon. Finally, the PJ Survey looked at phones - they found that Samsung and Motorola were the primary phones being switched out. As I talked to phone switchers in line or as I looked at the people in line there were a lot of RAZRs and Samsungs but LGs also seemed to be in evidence. I did not take a count but I suspect that they were about a third each.

Obviously, the PJ survey was pretty formal and mine was initiated because of boredom in line. The most surprising finding of the day was the knowledge about push technology. As I have noted in other posts, I like the idea of push technology to coordinate my digital devices. In the people I spoke with in line the recognition about a lot of the features, especially the Applications, was very high, but the understanding of the potential for push technology was relatively low - even with the people who understood technology. One couple I spoke with were emblematic. He was a Christian musician who bought one phone at AT&T and was in line for another. His girlfriend was a youth minister. I asked them about the phone and why they were choosing to buy another iPhone. They talked about applications and GPS but when I asked them about MobileMe they were unsure. When I told them about how it would work they were excited.