One-Third of U.S. High School Students Now Own an iPhone

[Konrad]

Wirelessly posted



Most people have cell phones so costs are entirely relative.

The cost to buy an iPhone on a family plan is not 1200.

You get a 3GS for free. You are on a family plan with a 10 a month line charge. That charge exists for any phone so it is not relevant. Then you pay for data. Well you use the data and pay for it. There is no magic data rate for having another phone.

Not to mention the massive utility the device offers. So the actual cost to buy an iPhone is $0. The cost to USE on is $30 a month. The cost to use an iPhone over a dumb phone is $20 a month. Most teenagers spend much more on clothes, music and going to movies each month.

Given what you can accomplish on a smartphone $20-$30 a month is a very good deal.

Using ridiculous voodoo math to claim phones cost 1200 to buy is very 2008. Please catch up with the times. Your logic is like saying that my $150 bookcase cost me $5000 because i bought books for it.

The cost difference between an iPhone and a dumb phone over two years is $480. That is a very good value. You would have to be kind of dumb not to get it because it would probably provide you or your kid way more than $500 of value or worth over that time.

Can we please just be done with the bad cellphone math from 2007-2008?

Can you kindly define the "monthly accomplishment" using a smartphone and the $500 value/worth? The worth of what?

Your logic is similar to fine cuisine versus an all-you-can-eat feed stop.

 

[ericinboston]

Sounding like an old fart, I really am shocked at high schoolers NEED a cell or smartphone at all. There is not enough data in this survey to showcase what prices kids are paying, contracts, and ages/grades. Of course nobody is telling me it is a NEED but as a parent, it is certainly not a need for 99% of any high schooler.

I can see seniors having a cell phone for emergency reasons but not other grades....and certainly not $200 iPhones plus 2 year contracts. Again, there is very little data in this survey.

And let's be real....smartphones are just computers that can also make a phone call....the is no NEED for such a device in high school. But alas, it's probably inevitable that society will find it appalling if the 13 year old and older kids do not have a smartphone to call mommy if the temperature is 2 degrees cooler than thought and wants to be picked up by mommy in her car.

 

[ericinboston]

Wirelessly posted



Most people have cell phones so costs are entirely relative.

The cost to buy an iPhone on a family plan is not 1200.

You get a 3GS for free. You are on a family plan with a 10 a month line charge. That charge exists for any phone so it is not relevant. Then you pay for data. Well you use the data and pay for it. There is no magic data rate for having another phone.

Not to mention the massive utility the device offers. So the actual cost to buy an iPhone is $0. The cost to USE on is $30 a month. The cost to use an iPhone over a dumb phone is $20 a month. Most teenagers spend much more on clothes, music and going to movies each month.

Given what you can accomplish on a smartphone $20-$30 a month is a very good deal.

Using ridiculous voodoo math to claim phones cost 1200 to buy is very 2008. Please catch up with the times. Your logic is like saying that my $150 bookcase cost me $5000 because i bought books for it.

The cost difference between an iPhone and a dumb phone over two years is $480. That is a very good value. You would have to be kind of dumb not to get it because it would probably provide you or your kid way more than $500 of value or worth over that time.

Can we please just be done with the bad cellphone math from 2007-2008?

You assume everyone got a free, ancient iPhone 3GS and are on the family plan. Not so. You need to consider:

1. The cost of owning a smartphone is like a car....you still need to pay for the contract and any other usage just like paying for gas and toll booths. So an iPhone 4 or 4s starts at $199 and forces you into a 2 year contract....if you are by yourself, then that's about $60/ month for 24 months. If you get on a family plan it is still about $45/month if I remember when my parents got 2 iPhones on 1 plan last year at Verizon. These are real costs that frankly, I don't see how a high schooler old afford unless mommy and daddy help out. So please don't tell us that your example with a bookcase (that you are welcome to stack pictures of your family or in fact nothing at all ) is comparable to a smartphone plan which MANDATES you buy other services for at least 2 years.

2. Buying a non-smartphone is a lot cheaper as far as using the device primarily for phone calls or just emergency usage. There are dozens of free phones (so you save at least $199 right there) and the plans are quite cheaper because you don't have all the data baggage stuff...so plans are about $45 by yourself and a lot cheaper on a family plan. Plus there are 1 year contracts with cell phones unlike smartphones. My mom uses one of those $25 every 6-month cell phone packages that buys her like 200 mins of usage on her $19 phone she bought a few months ago....so her yearly cost is about $50 in service and $20 for the one time phone purchase....so quite cheap compared to traditional lock-in contracts as well as smartphone contracts. And of course everyone has their wants/needs for what they want to own.

 

[Plutonius]

I'm not sure what significance this story has ? Most likely 99.9% of the high school students with iPhones are not paying for their phone plans or even their iPhone (i.e. the parents are paying).

 

[Tiger8]

don't forget ebay!

I think the secondary marked for Apple products is strong too, a lot of parents upgraded to 4s and gave their old 3G/Gs to their kids. Also ebay makes a good option

 

[Wicked1]

Not bad for one company that makes one brand of phone and one os to compete with Android which is on several mfg phones with many different models and versions of iOS.

I say let's compare Apple's to Apple's here, pick one android os and one phone, the iPhone is truly going to be the one on top after all the dust settles and everyone gets tired of dealing with the laggy and odd issues on Android.

I am all for competition, but it looks like the only ones left in the game is Apple and Google. Palm is gone, Windows Mobile hasn't done anything, and BB/RIM is on it's way to a slow painful death, they are even looking to break the company apart and sell it off. Then you have Symbian and others which are slowly going away.

 

[MH01]

Stats just in 1/3 of US Highschool kids spoilt!

Everyone knows the proper method of communicating in high school is a notepad sized piece of paper, with a message, crunched up in a ball and thrown at the recipient.

And respect was based on which Air Jordan's you had.... not an Apple product!

 

[CalWizrd]

When I was in high school, this was the hot phone at the time... Guess I was born too early!

 

[MH01]

I believe it. I'm a senior in highschool in St Louis, MO and I have an iPhone 4S and iPad 2 which I use for papers and research all the time in class. I don't see as many people with iPads in school, but iPhones are all over the place.

" I have an iPhone 4S and iPad 2 which I use for papers and research all the time in class"

Research and High School!?!?!?! You what? Research in high school equals ones ability to type wiki into google and then have the street smarts to plagiarise enough so the teacher does not realise/care. You do not need an Iphone 4s or Ipad to get through high school for research, if your parents bought that storyline.... shame on them or they are just rich!

Don't worry been there done that, I remember when I really really really needed that new PC for study.... strangely enough 95% of it was used on gaming...

 

[bpaluzzi]

And iPad is just leisure.

Whoah, it's like I've gone back in time to 2010 again.

So how did Gene personally get in contact with every High School student in the U.S.?

Surely he must have done that, in order to produce and stand behind such an outlandish claim.

Or, more likely, he guessed as much, which anyone can do.

Do you really not understand the idea of statistical sampling?

As you may have read, the iPhone is no where near as popular in Europe where carrier subsidies are rare and users have to pay for the phone upfront.

False, false, and false. Want to try again?

you mean the same way apple still hasnt adapted the bigger screen sizes that clearly are the future of smartphones?

Clearly the future. As evidenced by the fact that the top three smartphones are all 3.5". But, you know, other than that

This is cool and all but wouldn't the money spent on iPhones be better spent on some good books, indy movies and documentaries, or art classes( ex: photography- learning to develop real film in a darkroom, figure drawing, printmaking, etc...)? playing angry birds on the iphone is cool but it doesn't compare to learning how to etch on copper. Even setting up the chemicals to develop B&W film is infinitely more interesting than logging in to update ones facebook status. IMO, learning technique and skill is best done at a young age and i just think some of these kids might be missing out on some hands on learning while playing with their iphones.

I remember the highlight of my teenage years was finally being able to afford to buy some Koh I Noor pens and a set of 120 prismacolors. It sounds lame but man was I happy.

Why on earth would you teach kids outdated skills like that? If they want to take art or photography classes as electives, then that's fine. But the idea of having copper etching as a core curriculum course is about as relevant as having cow milking or leather tanning as a core course.

iPhone4S is decent, I was considering on getting one but a monopoly is never good, I - one person will be negligible in terms of marketshare but I refuse to add to Apple's monopoly.

Another person who doesn't understand the meaning of the word "monopoly"

Good for your high school's need to pad your ego and give you `extra credit' grade scales.

Universities don't.
.

It's not to pad your resume, it's to give you additional incentive to take the tougher courses. The school makes the case (and the correct one) that trying a tougher course, even if you get a B, is more beneficial than sandbagging in a normal course and getting the A. The extra credit point is the benefit for this. And colleges don't do something directly, but a B at a great university is definitely worth more than an A at a run-of-the-mill university. It's all about rewarding people taking the more difficult path.

Research and High School!?!?!?! You what? Research in high school equals ones ability to type wiki into google and then have the street smarts to plagiarise enough so the teacher does not realise/care. You do not need an Iphone 4s or Ipad to get through high school for research, if your parents bought that storyline.... shame on them or they are just rich!

Ever think that maybe not everyone went to a high school as bad as yours seems to be?

 

[Tomacorno]

When I was in high school, this was the hot phone at the time... Guess I was born too early!

Wow. We did not have fancy red lights on our POTs when I was a youngun.

 

[Frobozz]

This is an astounding number to me. Not so much that pre-people are interested in the best new gadgets. It's that they not only desire them, it's that they own them. Clearly a lot of kids have parents who buy them smartphones.

This is going to date me– but when I was in high school and just starting college, pagers were still in use. And I think it was maybe $40 a month. I could barely afford that. That was pretty much all the extra money I had after I paid for expenses and put money away for school. And I was working 39.5 hours a week at Burger King. Making about $4 an hour. Now I think I understand what my parents were going through, now that I have a kid of my own. I immediately think– how lucky are these kids to have what amounts to a computer in their pocket? My parents had dirt and I had a Texas Instruments pocket calculator if I was lucky.

Anyone that tells you about the good 'ole days is remembering it all wrong. It's way better now.

----------

When I was in high school, this was the hot phone at the time... Guess I was born too early!

The hot accessory was a really, really, really long cord that would get tangled immediately.

There was some comedian that had a bit about rotary phones that just cracks me up: we hated people with zeros in their number because you can to swing that thing all the way around. And, god forbid, you screwed up the number and had to start over.

----------

Stats just in 1/3 of US Highschool kids spoilt!

Everyone knows the proper method of communicating in high school is a notepad sized piece of paper, with a message, crunched up in a ball and thrown at the recipient.

And respect was based on which Air Jordan's you had.... not an Apple product!

It used to be that you had to be an artist to send an image to your friends. Now you just point, shoot, and send. Life is so much nicer now. But, for the record, I don't regret getting a BFA and learning how to draw. ;-)

 

[MH01]

Ever think that maybe not everyone went to a high school as bad as yours seems to be?

owww I went to high school a long long time ago, and it was just fine. Once you graduate from university and move onto further studies you will realise what research is. The concept of research at high school is laughable. Your just hand fed. The main difference is we had Britannica, now you get Google! Just an easier way to plagiarise.

 

[bpaluzzi]

owww I went to high school a long long time ago, and it was just fine. Once you graduate from university and move onto further studies you will realise what research is. The concept of research at high school is laughable. Your just hand fed. The main difference is we had Britannica, now you get Google! Just an easier way to plagiarise.

Once again, just because you went to a bad high school doesn't mean everyone does / did.

 

[MH01]

Once again, just because you went to a bad high school doesn't mean everyone does / did.

On the contrary. Seems like you never done higher eduction and have no idea what real research means. Scratch that, have no idea what research means.

Sounds like you went to a posh high school You might be shocked that we got roughly the same level of education.

 

[bpaluzzi]

On the contrary. Seems like you never done higher eduction and have no idea what real research means. Scratch that, have no idea what research means.

Sounds like you went to a posh high school You might be shocked that we got roughly the same level of education.

Nope, I never have done higher eduction. I did, however have a fair bit of higher education, including learning how to use apostrophes. And worked on published research. And definitely not a posh high school. A little podunk rural school, but filled with good teachers and good classes. We most certainly did NOT receive the same level of education, but believe whatever you want.

 

[fruitycups]

this means that productivity levels are down..

 

[justperry]

Poor is relative. People in America don't realize what poor means in many other parts of the world. Here, the poor have cars (yes maybe they're beaten up 15 year old station wagons that haven't been maintained since date of purchase, but they're cars) and TVs. In many parts of the world, the poor barely get enough food on the table, let alone a car or a TV. We don't have real poverty in this country, and that's a fact.

Although I agree with most of it it's not completely true.
In many poor countries you see that many DO have a Tv, it's "cheap" entertainment and I know that here in Indonesia, which is poor overall, that there is an area on Lombok where children are malnourished but the parents have a Tv and a mobile telephone.
There are even slumps in Jakarta where you see satellite dishes!

That number really is disgusting. I'm all for success, but not a monopoly.

You got a lot of down votes, as usual with your comments, it's not smart to do that here on this forum, lots of fanbois who just can't take any negative comment.
I am an Apple User long before all the iToys came out and I don't like it either that there is too much hype and too much Apple iStuff around, but you have to admit Apple is doing a hell of a job.
One day it will end (not soon), another company will rise and it will be all a bit normal again.


I don't get it, so many times they say here that those iPhones are cheap-$ 49-$ 0-$199 or whatever but that's not true, you pay more than full price for them having a contract, sorry to say but I find people just plain stupid to have contracts and pay effing big time for it.

This low cost of entry crap - is crap.
It matters little if the phone $49, $149, or 1 penny.

It's the life-over-contract that matters - what's that about $2000?

Any student who doesn't understand the long term contract consequences ( in USA) of the phone, and not the initial price, is in for a lesson!

phone-crack

Exactly.

 

[justperry]

The financial ignorance this implies is deeply disturbing. That the down-payment for an very high priced device has encouraged so much wasteful spending should bother us all. That this is happening to our children is atrocious.

Unfortunately, advertisements as well as this forum, continue to obscure the true price paid for Apple's iPhone by ignoring the monthly loan payments incorporated in the carrier's bill.

As you may have read, the iPhone is no where near as popular in Europe where carrier subsidies are rare and users have to pay for the phone upfront.

The iPhone is excellent technology, but it does come at a real price. Obscuring its price adds to Apple's sales but hurts our fellow citizens and, in this story, our children.

There are many contract in Europe but also a lot of prepaid users.

For the rest your on the spot but not well received here.

 

[justperry]

There is obviously a lot of people, especially that one, that has no clue what an monopoly is.

But what's scary is that we are moving towards something similar to a monopoly due to just a superior product(s) that no one can seem to compete with.

Sooner or later, someone is going to 'edit' the term monopoly to change what it means so Apple can't dominate.

You said it in a much better way than I did in a post above.

In a former topic about iPads in Dutch schools I actually said it is wrong to do so, just because of the "monopoly" it creates and it is scary.
Students should be able to choose in between brands and schools should provide material on the major OS platforms.

 

[MH01]

Nope, I never have done higher eduction. I did, however have a fair bit of higher education, including learning how to use apostrophes. And worked on published research. And definitely not a posh high school. A little podunk rural school, but filled with good teachers and good classes. We most certainly did NOT receive the same level of education, but believe whatever you want.

Teachers aside, curriculum is dictated by the Department of Education.

http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/curriculum

same same but different eh? We learned about the same crap that was hand fed via set curriculum. Your assumption that I went to a bad school is arrogant at best. Guess what, we both passed high school! I even managed that with my bad ass school... how how how did I beat the odds eh?? Well the set curriculum was not that hard, its more to weed out the drop outs then to identify star performers!

 

[bpaluzzi]

Teachers aside, curriculum is dictated by the Department of Education.

http://www.education.gov.uk/schools/teachingandlearning/curriculum

same same but different eh? We learned about the same crap that was hand fed via set curriculum. Your assumption that I went to a bad school is arrogant at best. Guess what, we both passed high school! I even managed that with my bad ass school... how how how did I beat the odds eh?? Well the set curriculum was not that hard, its more to weed out the drop outs then to identify star performers!

I didn't go to school in the UK.

 

[Tainter]

what app is the one in the middle ?(today) .??

 

[charlituna]

you mean the same way apple still hasnt adapted the bigger screen sizes that clearly are the future of smartphones?

A comment based on your false assumption that bigger screens are the 'clearly' the future. It could turn out that they are not.

but it doesn't compare to learning how to etch on copper. Even setting up the chemicals to develop B&W film is infinitely more interesting

to you. But your opinion is NOT universal.

Good for your high school's need to pad your ego and give you `extra credit' grade scales.

Clearly you never took any AP classes. The scale was up'd because they are, or at least were intended to be, college level classes. The amount of knowledge and work to get an A would be, in a correctly taught class, much more than one would have to do to get an A in a regular class. Thus you got more points for the greater level of work.

Students should be able to choose in between brands and schools should provide material on the major OS platforms.

That assumes that the materials are available on all platforms. Which is likely a very false assumption. Companies will focus on how they can make the most money, even 'noble' companies like textbook publishers going digital. They will start with the best money maker which at the moment is the iPad. Many of them probably haven't even considered things like Windows Metro or WebOS (if it is even still around) and very likely not the too many cooks in the kitchen Android where an app can work great on that Samsung but suck on all other companies phones because they altered the OS.

 

[3dflyboy1]

Good for your high school's need to pad your ego and give you `extra credit' grade scales.

Universities don't.

It's an insult to any educated person and explains greatly how come the US is so embarrassingly far behind.

If I got perfect marks on my Differential Equations final I don't get 110%. I get an A at 100%. You'll discover [if you take a difficult degree] that even if you get a 96% that can actually become a B+ due to a curve where your class can be full of 100% students. No class is ever 100%+ in any respected and ABET accredited University.

The reason the GPA boosts are offered is because the classes are college-level. It's insulting to insinuate that I'm far behind, as I am 17 and taking college chemistry, calculus, and literature courses. I will be able to get my pre-med undergrad in three years by the time I graduate high school.

Wirelessly posted

Most people have cell phones so costs are entirely relative.

The cost to buy an iPhone on a family plan is not 1200.

You get a 3GS for free. You are on a family plan with a 10 a month line charge. That charge exists for any phone so it is not relevant. Then you pay for data. Well you use the data and pay for it. There is no magic data rate for having another phone.

Not to mention the massive utility the device offers. So the actual cost to buy an iPhone is $0. The cost to USE on is $30 a month. The cost to use an iPhone over a dumb phone is $20 a month. Most teenagers spend much more on clothes, music and going to movies each month.

Given what you can accomplish on a smartphone $20-$30 a month is a very good deal.

Using ridiculous voodoo math to claim phones cost 1200 to buy is very 2008. Please catch up with the times. Your logic is like saying that my $150 bookcase cost me $5000 because i bought books for it.

The cost difference between an iPhone and a dumb phone over two years is $480. That is a very good value. You would have to be kind of dumb not to get it because it would probably provide you or your kid way more than $500 of value or worth over that time.

Can we please just be done with the bad cellphone math from 2007-2008?

It's not "bad cellphone math." It's the actual cost of a two-year contract. Even with a "free" phone, you still end up paying ~$80 each month for a smartphone, which adds up to about $1920+fees and taxes. Even on a family plan, the cost easily reaches $1200.

I don't see how that is inaccurate.