Neil Hughes
The details come from a survey of 3,000 individuals polled by investment firm Piper Jaffray. The results of the poll were revealed in a research note published Wednesday by analyst Christopher M. Larsen and shared with AppleInsider.
The survey found that 47 percent of consumers feel they don't need 4G LTE, and another 26 percent indicated they feel all 4G network technologies are the same. Just 15 percent of those polled said that 4G LTE is the best network technology.
Apple released its first 4G LTE device earlier this year with the debut of the third-generation iPad. That's helped to fuel expectations that Apple's next iPhone, frequently referred to as the "iPhone 5," will also feature 4G LTE connectivity, exceeding the 3G network technology found on previous iPhone models.
Piper Jaffray's survey also found that consumers are ambivalent about which U.S. carrier has the best 4G LTE network. Among those polled, 51 percent indicated they don't know who has the best 4G network, or that all 4G networks are the same.
Among consumers who do have an opinion on 4G LTE networks, Verizon was the clear winner. But Larsen said the general lack of opinion among consumers is good news for AT&T, Sprint and T-Mobile.
The poll also asked consumers about Apple's next iPhone, and found that 55 percent of those surveyed said they are considering purchasing it. Among those who may buy an iPhone, 44 percent said they will choose Verizon, 29 percent said AT&T, 14 percent were with Sprint, and 13 percent would opt for T-Mobile, which isn't currently one of Apple's U.S. carrier partners.
"With these results in hand, we expect Verizon to continue to gain market share of high-value smartphone (subscribers)," Larsen wrote. "Keep in mind, the iPhone carries a high subsidy, and therefore high initial sales have a short term negative impact on margins."
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87 Comments
Broadly, consumers don't understand technology or what they think they 'need' until they use it first. I think this is a poorly worded poll, but I'm sure people would and have said the same about broadband internet, HD TVs and mulitcore computers.
[quote name="AppleInsider" url="/t/152066/47-of-us-consumers-feel-they-dont-need-4g-lte#post_2172849"]Though Apple's next iPhone is widely expected to have high-speed 4G long-term evolution connectivity, a new survey has found that nearly half of American consumers feel they don't need 4G LTE.[/quote]
What an idiotic survey.
Of course most people don't NEED 4G LTE. It's nice, but I can't think of very many situations where it is a necessity.
In addition, the survey is ridiculous. When creating a survey, you want the options to be similar on content and mutually exclusive. Here, people are asked "which is better" and then given an option of "I don't need 4G LTE" which doesn't even answer the question - and most people could give two different responses.
I really wish that people who are in the business of giving surveys would learn how to construct them.
I find 4G substantially more productive here in NYC. On my commute to work, I like to check my mails, web servers, google analytics and such. 3G was very slow and spotty. When I bought the 3rd generation iPad, the performance was 10x. Pages load like wifi. In this city, waiting longer is getting less done. Simple as that.
This is why the techie/nerd/geek crowd lives in a bubble. The majority of users aren't on their mobile devices 24/7 streaming movies and sucking up bandwidth. The majority of users are texting, reading email, and occasionally visiting a web site to check the price of bananas that day. They don't need 4G or unlimited data plans. Only the wankers who visit forums like this one get enraged that they can't use 25GB of data every day and not pay extra for it, or that the latency on their smart phone is keeping them from winning some online game. Meanwhile the "spectrum apocalypse" is on its way. Oh God! how will we survive?
If I were the phone companies, I would be more concerned that over 70% either don't think they need it or don't really care (aka, "they are all the same"). I would put myself in the "I don't NEED it group." Sure, it would be nice, but I'm really not willing to pay anything extra for the additional speed.