Are iPhone users really that bad? We’re not buying it. It’s odd that a consumer electronics shopping site would sponsor a study that paints such a lousy picture of iPhone owners, but that’s exactly what Retrevo.com has done. For whatever reason, the results of their recent report on smartphone owners in the U.S. has returned some unflattering figures about those who own Apple’s ubiquitous handheld, the iPhone, as compared to the more business-minded folks who choose a Blackberry instead.
According to this study, iPhone owners are more likely to judge potential partners based on their gadgets and not their college degree, handle breakups via email or text, and yet somehow still think of themselves as “intellectuals” despite the fact that they spend more time than their counterparts texting, watching videos, and visiting adult sites on their phones.
Really?
If you’re an iPhone owner yourself, you’re probably going to be taken a bit aback by these findings. For example, the study claims that “cool gadgets” make a person three times more attractive to an iPhone owner than a college degree. Meanwhile “old” gadgets are a turnoff to one in three iPhone users. And yet, if that person spends a little too much time with said gadgets, one in four iPhone owners will break up with them. One in three will do it via email or text message.
Taken on their own, it’s hard to say whether these stats are indicative of anything about iPhone owners specifically, or if they could apply to any group of smartphone-owning mobile users. That’s why the report compares the iPhone and Blackberry owners on each topic. When studied this way, iPhone owners beat Blackberry owners in every category where “winning” is actually the equivalent of being a materialistic, flaky, fickle dolt…well, at least in our opinion.
To spin the findings even further in Blackberry’s favor, one of the questions involved asking the mobile users how they “see” themselves. 40% of the iPhone owners claimed they were an “intellectual” while only 36% of Blackberry users said the same. Propped up against the other results, it’s an almost laughable claim.
Don’t Buy this Hype
Clearly, this survey wasn’t meant to be an in-depth examination of the smartphone toting population – in fact, it’s more likely just a publicity stunt to generate talk about Retrevo. Given the questions asked, there were bound to be some “rather interesting” findings, no matter how the respondents answered. And by keeping the sample size to a low number – only 445 individuals – there’s no guarantee that these folks are representative of the population at large in any way. After all, who signs up for online surveys anyway? While the panel of participants was distributed across gender, age, income and location in the U.S., what’s undisclosed is how the questions were asked – was this done scientifically or were they leading questions designed to generate these sorts of results? We’d bet on the latter.
Still, you have to wonder if there isn’t a tiny bit of truth hiding in these numbers somewhere. Could it be that those who buy Apple’s smartphone are a little more wrapped up in mobile life than those whose smartphone purchase probably had more to do with accessing company email in a timely fashion? That may be possible, but that wouldn’t exactly be an incredible reveal if so, now would it?
