iPhone Ownership Among U.S. Teens Hits 87% | Hacker News Reader

iPhone Ownership Among U.S. Teens Hits 87%

macrumors.com

69 pointsa9ex71 comments

Yea that's what happens when Apple teams up with teens to bully anyone without an iPhone.

Oh yes?

It really does suck to be in group chats with Android users, pictures get downsized, "Person loved 'message'", voice memos don't work, you can't see people's dnd status, no deliver quietly, no typing indicators or read receipts. You can't airdrop to them, or share iCloud notes, or contribute to shared photo albums. Facetime is far and away the best video calling experience that exists.

Android phones just aren't good enough to be worth the switch, especially when they're the same price. I've never paid more than $300 for an iPhone.

There's no actual draw to Android, your choices on the market today are iPhones and worse off brand iPhones desperately trying to be iPhones. It used to be a meme that at every WWCD Apple would announce features that Android had for years and we'd all have a laugh but now it's flipped the other way which is honestly embarrassing for Google who burnt through so much of their advantage.

> Android phones just aren't good enough to be worth the switch, especially when they're the same price. I've never paid more than $300 for an iPhone.

Where, if I may ask, do you get such a good deal?

They either buy used or a couple generation old. I've never paid more than $350 for an iphone myself. If you don't "have to have" cutting edge, then older phones are fine.

How old is old in this case? 1 or 2 generations of the lowest (SE) or second lowest (mini/regular) tiers?

i just got a 12 mini for $350

Yep! I’m always sitting 2-3 gens back. My current is an iPhone X which is more than capable and I’ve felt no need whatsoever to upgrade.

In the last decade I have never paid more than $0.00 for an iPhone. Just wait for mobile carriers to offer free phones. I switched from T-Mobile to Verizon 2 weeks ago and got a 128gig iPhone 13 mini for free. I actually wanted the SE because I like the home button but it was $400 some bucks. Carriers are constantly having promos like that when they have excess stock, the promos are just not always advertised.

Did you have to sign a 12-24 month contract with early termination clause?

Try paying cash for your phone and get a data plan from mint mobile or Google fi for $15-17 per month. you will save money.

No wonder Apple dropped XMPP support when walled gardens are much more effetive for market capture.

Do Google’s chat apps support XMPP? Would it help iMessage connect to Android’s chat(s)?

Google did support XMPP, but they dropped it.

The problem with chat experience is that it's really, truly not Android's fault, it's Apple's. It sucks because Apple wants it to suck to push iOS and macOS sales. Pretty useless blaming Android for that.

I have managed to push most of the people I know to not use SMS or iMessage and use Signal - we can all have a high quality chat and media sharing experience with a comparable (or superior) security model on whatever device you have. iOS, Android, Mac, Windows, Linux, etc.

> The problem with chat experience is that it's really, truly not Android's fault, it's Apple's.

Apple forced Google to screw up it's messaging strategy for all these years?

>Google has been unable to field a stable, competitive messaging platform for years and has thoroughly lost the messaging war to products with a long-term strategy. At least some divisions inside the company are waking up to how damaging this is to Google as a company, and now Google's latest strategy is to... beg its competition for mercy?

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/new-google-site-begs...

The article you link mentions Google asking Apple to use RCS, which is the industry standard for messaging interop these days, not SMS. Apple has so far declined, so nobody can function in their Messages app.

>RCS, which is the industry standard

The article I linked to points out that RCS, as used by Google today, is a proprietary closed source fork of RCS that Google has refused to create a public API for.

>Google's version of RCS—the one promoted on the website with Google-exclusive features like optional encryption—is definitely proprietary, by the way.

If this is supposed to be a standard, there's no way for a third-party to use Google's RCS APIs right now. Some messaging apps, like Beeper, have asked Google about integrating RCS and were told there's no public RCS API and no plans to build one.

If you want to implement RCS, you'll need to run the messages through some kind of service, and who provides that server? It will probably be Google.

So the pitch for Apple to adopt RCS isn't just this public-good nonsense about making texts with Android users better; it's also about running Apple's messages through Google servers. Google profits in both server fees and data acquisition.

https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2022/08/new-google-site-begs...

If Apple won't implement RCS, can Google implement iMessage?

Apple isn't begging Google to implement iMessage. Nor is Apple creating a public smearing campaign against Google for not implementing iMessage.

Yeah it seems the only solution is for Apple and Google to truly come together and work on an open standard. At that point, if Apple refuses, it’s on Apple.

I agree though, right now it really isn’t a defensible argument from Google.

The EU is going to mandate interoperability soon, because it turned out that these companies cannot be trusted with allowing users to do what they want to do.

SMS already represents universal messaging interoperability.

Even ancient no-longer-updated dumb phones support SMS.

Yes, but the EU wants to open up modern messaging:

https://techcrunch.com/2022/03/24/dma-political-agreement/

Everyone needs search, and it's unfair that Google has spent over a decade creating a better search engine than its competitors, so Google should be forced to open source their search algorithms.

Is this the argument you guys are seriously making?

The solution for a competitor having a better product than you is to pick a single strategy and keep iterating on whatever it is you build, instead of abandoning one product after another.

Search is not something that requires interoperability. I can use DDG without any of my friends using it.

iMessage already has interoperability through support for the universal SMS standard.

> RCS, as used by Google today, is a proprietary closed source fork

That’s news to me, interesting.

So is this fork fully incompatible with the spec, or it just adds some features beyond that spec? I.e. if Apple implements the open spec can they communicate with Google systems using the base spec features?

If Google built and run their own non-interoperable fork as a competing messaging system then I strongly agree that they don’t have a leg to stand on.

I’m a bit less convinced with the whole “Google wants your data” angle. The whole reason they used RCS in the first place is because carriers want to run their own messaging infra, and I believe the carriers still do even if they are using Google’s spec (eg see https://www.theverge.com/2021/6/30/22556686/att-android-phon..., though I am not certain on this point). In the past Google tried to get carriers to buy in to their own proprietary service and failed.

It looks to me more that AT&T, Verizon (a bit) and T-Mobile are all running Google’s version of the RCS spec on their own networks and servers, so even if it isn’t open (it should be), it is still a de facto industry standard. So I think they still have a case here that Apple should fall back to this spec instead of SMS.

And yet it refuses to actually open source RCS. Imagine if they could add RCS fallback to signal!

https://www.droid-life.com/2021/04/08/apple-android-imessage...

> the #1 most difficult [reason] to leave the Apple universe app is iMessage. . . iMessage amounts to serious lock-in,” Schiller commented that “moving iMessage to Android will hurt us more than help us, this email illustrates why.”

They know it's lock-in, and won't be fixing it any time soon.

Granted, moving to Whatsapp would resolve this but then you're using a Meta product.

I thought the pictures being downsized was due to compression to more easily go through SMS whereas iMessage is an internet-based chat, not just because "Android bad"

His entire "argument" was that iOS is better because it uses a proprietary internet chat while Android cannot use the same service.

Android not being compatible with completely different phone's using mainly closed-source proprietary software.. It's not at all reasonable to expect other phone brands to support Facetime, iCloud, or whatever other service they have.

This entire comment is headboggling, amazing how one can be so closeminded that they only see value in Apple.

Would you want your kid to have a device that gets quickly abandoned by its manufacturer with unpatched security holes?

>52% of teens cite Amazon as their No. 1 favorite e-comm site; SHEIN, Nike, Lululemon, and Pacsun took spots No. 2-5

I've only ever heard of two on this list. Interesting.

Also to note there's shockingly low diversity in footwear and phone choices. Why is the teen market such a winner take all environment?

Couldn’t tell you about Pacsun’s popularity, but SHEIN is the fast fashion of fast fashion. Absolutely dirt cheap copycat apparel shipped from China with a very liberal return policy.

Lulu and Nike seem very status-oriented and I believe they don’t list on Amazon directly so makes sense there.

Pacsun was big in the 90s, they had stores in a ton of malls that sold mostly clothes from surf brands like Quicksilver and Billabong. Interesting to see it on that list.

SHEIN has a small run just in time manufacturing model. They carry less than a day of inventory of many items and consolidate and airmail from warehouses next to their Chinese factories.

H&M and Zara cannot compete. They order three months ahead, have six months of stock sitting on slow sea freight or in stores, and discard a massive amount of clothing from their stores at the end of season.

Shein has an interesting story behind it.

https://www.euronews.com/green/2022/04/05/welcome-to-the-dar...

https://www.marketplace.org/2022/05/06/business-shein-fast-f...

I never understood why people would pay so much more for a phone with similar functionality as an androidd phone. I'm not saying iphones don't look and feel more premium but the price premium just doesn't make sense to me.

The difference of $35 a month instead of $55 isn't that important if it means owning the iPhone.

Why people pay so much more for a car with similar functionality as an another car?

The price isn't really such a problem if you don't indocrtinate yourself into buying a new one each year.

But this shouldn't be applicaple to teens though, probably?

People like devices with high-quality, long-lasting hardware. They like their phones to be secure and to receive OS updates from the vendors for their entire planned usable life. They want excellent cameras. They want their phone to perform well and just work.

Under these conditions, why would you ever buy an Android?

Apple is a very local company, mostly US. The phone is not better, it's just better suited to that population.

The phone is absolutely better. Better battery, nicer looking screen, more solid feel, faster processor, better game performance, better software integration (if you don’t care about customization).

The only real downside to someone that isn’t a power user is price, and even power users can tweak iOS enough for nearly any use case. An example is that you can currently sideload a virtual machine app from altstore that can literally run Linux with full USBC (or lightning to USB) pass through.

Better battery: you can't do anything with it because it's not supported. Of course you have better battery if nothing uses it.

Nicer screen: with that huge camera cutout it's just ugly.

More solid feel: if you tap the middle of the screen it feels hallow, like a cardboard box.

Better software integration: to make my apple tv to be my home hub or however it is called, I had to look up the answer. I only found the question from 12 years ago with no answer (there is no community in apple universe, just individual customers). I finally gave the answer to that question myself after a week of poking. Horrible sw integration.

Other stuff: you can't move icons where you want (what a joke!), you can't have a link to a picture on home screen, you can't... you can't... you can't... but hey look at that battery not getting drained by nothing!

> The phone is absolutely better. Better battery, nicer looking screen, more solid feel, faster processor, better game performance, better software integration

Better than what, budget phones? Android phones worth half its price have comparable features nowadays. Apple has failed miserably in gaining customers from markets where its hegemony wasn't already established, including the world's largest smartphone markets (China & India). American localisation is absolutely the largest thing going for them.

Except for the fact that the reason many markets buy android phones is because they are very budget oriented devices. Go to Mexico, India, China, Eastern Europe, anywhere where the purchasing power isn’t nearly on par with the US and you’ll find the reason everyone has android phones is because their carrier gives them a free one that happens to be years old and just about as terrible as they come. It’s essentially the equivalent of a galaxy s7 (great phone) in 2022. It’s just a bad phone by todays technological standards

That.. doesn't happen at all. I am from and in India, I would know. The only carrier that gives a free phone here is Jio, and that's a feature phone. In absolute terms there are way more people in India with enough purchasing power to buy iPhones than in almost all other countries except China and the US, just because it population is that large, but I'll agree it won't compensate for % share. It's still ironic that Apple manufactures phones here and has still failed to capture the country's market.

This is the correct answer

I thought so too, but then I got a cheap return iphone and was blown away.

I now help all my friends buy cheap iphones for about $150/phone. They are either openbox or refurbished by apple, still under apple warranty. Currently iphone 11 64gb is that sweet spot.

Cpu is still faster than most modern androids. Nvme ssd doesn't wear out as cheap emmc on androids. Phone receives way better software tuning than any android because apple iterates slower.

And best part: phone can be serviced on the cheap in almost any mall in the world. Everyone got spare screens, batteries,cases sell in dollar store.

I get Latest ios releases. I was using pixels before and when they broke, esp during travel, it was a very uneconomical proposition.

Only thing I miss is termux and gcam.

>And best part: phone can be serviced on the cheap in almost any mall in the world. Everyone got spare screens, batteries,cases sell in dollar store.

Swapping parts like that on an iPhone doesn't work (anymore): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K2WhU77ihw8

Easy. Google is a spyware company, and Android is a spyware operating system. Outside of things like LineageOS or GrapheneOS I’d rather not have a phone than support Google or Android.

Among *American teens

Yes. The numbers for the world as a whole would be in the low single digits.

In recent years/months I too have seen teen (youngsters) floating around their Iphones, half way around the world. The numbers have increased considerably around 10% in teens from 1% few years back.

They mainly buy it as iphone is considered 'Posh', a sign of your class.

There is no way for them to use imessage as everyone uses Whatsapp, no way to use facetime as everyone uses Whatsapp Call and for these buyers no way to use apple premium apps as they cost large amount of money while google products are free.

A funny thing happened was when PUBG was banned here by government, it was removed by apple app store and google play store. But android users were still able to play PUBG by downloading and installing APK from web while apple users were not able to do it as according to apple 'Only hackers use Sideloading'. So, it was funny to watch at time android users gloating over iphone users.

It’s funny because literally the only reason WhatsApp caught on was because companies were gouging the fuck out of SMS costs. If every country did unlimited free talk and text, WhatsApp would be “what? Haven’t heard of that app” instead of the number one messaging app in Latin America

That’s just insane market capture and they’re probably locked in for life.

Deja vu almost, as i remember many eons ago, blackberry popularity catching on with ever younger demographics.. right before the iPhone was introduced...

This has me worried for competition in the smartphone market in the future

If I got a phone for a kid, it would be an iPhone. It has way fewer creepy privacy issues than other phones

(I would also seriously consider a linux phone)

Sus

Nothing gives it away more clearly that you’re undateable than your Android phone.

So hilarious. My car probably does too. And my other frugal behaviors. Guess I'll keep buying assets instead of liabilities.

Eh car less so. The trendy thing for Zoomers is to be anti car/stroad/SUV. Using a car shows that you hate the environment.

In the city? Maybe. In rural areas you'll get nowhere without a car, it's highly desirable.

Zoomers aren't exactly moving towards rural areas en masse (in fact the opposite is true[0]), so the parent comment's point still stands.

0. https://www.jchs.harvard.edu/blog/are-millennials-leaving-ci...

At least you can get few plus years out of "last year's" flagship Android phone.

Android is losing a generation, not a good sign for competition. I like my iPhone like many others I’m sure, but without competition it’s likely to stagnate and worse potentially have even higher price points.

Not really, this is only the US, from a % from across the world, it's Apple who is basically a rounding error.

This is only happening in the US. In the world's largest smartphone markets it has very measly (<5%) market shares. I'll be definitely surprised if the percentage even hits double digits if you see worldwide figures.

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