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78% of Teens Surveyed Own an iPhone, 82% Plan to Purchase

rjohnstone said:
Mine got a hand me down for her first one, and iPhone 4.
She then got a 5S (she paid for the phone, I covered the plan) and later and SE.
No way I'm handing a teenager a $1k phone. She broke the screen on the 5S and had to live with it until it was paid off.
She learned her lesson on the 5S and now has insurance on the SE.
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My two have hand me down iPhones, 6 & 6S. They're both getting 7's for XMas. A $1K phone? Not gonna happen.
 
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MrX8503 said:
I wish I had a phone at all when I was a teen. My parents never bought me a phone growing up and now that I'm an adult, I bought my mom an iPhone. Imagine that.
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It's fairly amazing to see how the technological world around us has changed. Today, kids of all ages have iPhones or smart phones with them for all purposes. Ten years ago, most students or teenagers never had phones with them. It's almost like it's a social norm to have a phone for the younger generation. (And of course, emoji's for teenagers are a must. )
 
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78 percent of teens surveyed own an iPhone, up two percent from the spring 2017 survey conducted earlier this year. 82 percent of teens said they hope the next smartphone their parents will buy for them will be an iPhone

Teen interest in the Apple Watch is also up, and 17 percent of teens surveyed said they hope their parents buy them an Apple Watch for Christmas or in the next six months, up from 13 percent in spring 2017.

Piper Jaffray's fall 2017 teen survey covered 6,100 teens across 44 states in the United States with an average age of 15.9 years.
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With an average age of 15.9 years, I had to fix the post for accuracy.
 
JayIsAwesome said:
Most likely that kid from my store is getting an iPhone 10 lol. I personally think it's weird to drop that much money on a kid especially on something like a phone. But hey maybe that's just me. If the parent thinks it's OK then cool lol but I just couldn't do it
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I've seen kids with Apple Watches and iPad Pros too, I don't think it's that weird... I wouldn't do that no matter how much disposable income I did/didn't have, but to each their own I guess.
 
I’m too old to have had a phone as a teenager (I got my first cell the year I graduated college, and was the first in my circle to have one). Beepers were big when I was in college, and private landlines were the thing in high school.

But.

My folks got my brother and me an original Macintosh computer when I was ten. We came home from camp to find it waiting to be set up in the living room. A LOT of relatives and friends thought we were totally spoiled by that purchase, especially considering the cost (we weren’t well off, and it took them a couple of years to pay it off), but my mother insisted that this computer thing was the wave of the future, and she wanted us to get in on it.

Phones, especially smartphones, are an even stronger link to the outside world, a safety tool, and more. I know of some families whose only internet connection is their smartphones. My friend is a librarian in a poor section of L.A., and a lot of teenagers don’t even have that.

There’re iPhones and iPhones, and a teenager with an SE is vastly different from one awaiting an X. I don’t begrudge any of it, as long as they’re not raising entitled jerks.
 
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IDK, when you can easily spend $50 for a basket of groceries these days, $1000 doesn't have as much buying power as people think it does. A teen that doesn't pay for food, insurance, rent, or other things can easily save up $1000 with dedication and a part time job. That, and some parents have savings accounts for gifts such as phones and other toys.

Today's cell phone, is Yesterdays RC car / train set / Nintendo / Playstation, etc.
 
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Candlelight said:
"Son, you need to learn the importance of money. Now here's your new iphone which cost me a month's salary".
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You only make between NZ$599 (iPhone SE) and NZ$1,549 (iPhone X) per month? That's an annual salary between NZ$7,188 and NZ$18,588 a year. :eek:
 
78 percent of kids born in the 70s surveyed own an X-Wing Fighter, 82 percent said their next will be the Millennium Falcon.
 
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So less then 0.003% of the population of America surveyed. Take into account that only teens were surveyed and that number is considerably less.

These things need to be put into perspective.
 
I can see this. I outgrew my iPhone over time as I need something more robust for daily business productivity.
 
Candlelight said:
"Son, you need to learn the importance of money. Now here's your new iphone which cost me a month's salary".
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Not true.

“Son, pay for your own phone on monthly bases based on your own hard earned money doing neighborhood yards and your work at the university bookstore. “

Thanks dad.
 
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Candlelight said:
"Son, you need to learn the importance of money. Now here's your new iphone which cost me a month's salary".
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LOL, maybe for a NZ sheep farmer, but even assuming that's a month's salary after taxes, that would still be poverty level in the US. Most are just paying for it on monthly plan. The kid could even have a part time job and easily pay that monthly bit.
 
I would be very skeptical about this. The very wise and talented Martin Fichter of HTC-fame said iPhones are no longer cool among kids—including his own—as everyone has iPhones so the Apple logo means less and less.
 
WBRacing said:
When I was a teenager I remember saying that my next car would be a Lotus Carlton. 2 decades later, I'm still waiting.

Seriously though, rightly or wrongly, Apple is now and for at least the forseeable going to maintain their cool rating, which is really what this research shows.
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I don't consider Apple the cool gadget to own. I just enjoy ios much more than android
 
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