A friend’s (uni student) daughter has been begging for an iPhone for Christmas. But, how fickle is this market? Because, while on a visit to my friend yesterday, I heard him greeted with the excited plea from his daughter – “Can I have a BlackBerry Storm for Christmas… please, please, pretty please?!”
And apparently, she is not alone … at least in that part of the world where all things seem to be topsey turvey…Ireland!
According to a report in today’s Irish Examiner, the Irish Consumer Choice magazine were not wiling to recommend the iPhone as the best buy for Christmas shoppers. Consumer Choice tested 20 phones from the five manufacturers dominating the market and report that:
the Sony Ericsson W890i, with a score of 71% came out tops, closely followed by the Nokia 5310 Xpress Music and the Samsung SGH-F480 Tocco with a score of 70%.
The Apple iPhone 3G (fourth!) was also labeled a “choice buy” with a score of 69%
All this just means that competition is hotting up for the Christmas mobile phone market. And the recession is only going to make the competition for the Christmas $ even hotter. But Apple has proven all through 2008 that it is not just a great design company – it has shown that it knows how to compete – and out-compete – even the big guns. And that it is prepared to be quite aggressive about keeping – and expanding – its market share.
As another recent study revealed, Apple is now in second place worldwide!
Is Apple going to do anything special to combat the BlackBerry release so near to Christmas? We all hope so – as all this competition is great for us consumers. Now would seem a great time to release the elusive iPhone Nano.
But, according to Jim Dalrymple reporting for Macworld Magazine less than a week ago, it aint gonna happen:
Despite Internet rumors of forthcoming product releases, an Apple representative confirmed that the company has no plans to release any new products before the holidays