4 ms·
Some ideas I got from this article: "I bought an Android phone to differentiate myself from the superficial drones carrying iPhones." "Nobody wants an iPhone
by mturmon 14y ago
Some ideas I got from this article:
"I bought an Android phone to differentiate myself from the superficial drones carrying iPhones."
"Nobody wants an iPhone any more, because everyone has an iPhone."
Too many anecdotes, not enough data.
- seanmcdirmid 14y ago> "I bought an Android phone to differentiate myself from the superficial drones carrying iPhones." If they really wanted to be different, they should buy a Windows Phone... Its hard to say where the truth is. There should be some fatigue over iPhone, but the Android alternatives aren't "good", who wants a second rate phone even if everyone else has the first rate one? Will people start wearing offbrand northpeak jackets because northface jackets are too popular?
- alwaysinshade 14y ago> > "I bought an Android phone to differentiate myself from the superficial drones carrying iPhones." > > If they really wanted to be different, they should buy a Windows Phone... A phone shouldn't be something that defines you as an individual.
- seanmcdirmid 14y agoThis is moral advice that doesn't belong in a thread that is talking about consumer behavior. There are a lot of things that people shouldn't do.
- herval 14y agoThe problem with that is the windows brand is not exactly associated with status. I'm pretty sure these people that buy "androids to differentiate themselves" are buying "sexy" brands - eg moto Razr or the galaxy III. (I know a couple of people that did and said just that)
- seanmcdirmid 14y agoWell, in my defense I was being a bit sarcastic; maybe ellipses aren't obvious enough? But if Nokia can break through with a phone, we might see some adoption as these were the same people buying up the older higher end feature phones. Most of my Chinese friends that have bought Android phones have done so solely for price reasons. All the fashionistas I know still use iPhones, I haven't seen one with an Android yet, and this is in Beijing.
- cageface 14y agoHere in Vietnam I see a ton of younger women using the Note 2. I've asked them about it and they said the iPhone is boring and they love the larger screen, which isn't a problem for them because it lives in their purse.
- seanmcdirmid 14y agoI've heard the same thing happening in Korea also, but it definitely hasn't happened here. Maybe we are just behind the trend.
- Evbn 14y agoWhat makes razr or galaxy iii sexy? It is just arbitrary faddism.
- mattgreenrocks 14y agoI think I liked it better when phones weren't a thing so you didn't have ridiculous lines of thought like the above. Yeah, I did.
- NoPiece 14y agoI agree. Another anecdotal claim is, "Singapore and Hong Kong tend to be, from an electronics perspective, leading indicators on what is going to be hot in Western Europe and North America, as well as what is going to take off in the region." That may be true in some things, but it wasn't true of iPhone adoption. How about some good examples where Singapore and Hong Kong lead trends that became big in Western Europe and North America?
- cageface 14y agoHaving lived in Asia for the last two years I don't find this hard to believe at all. There's an energy in the air here I don't feel anywhere in the U.S. and Europe. America's global cultural hegemony is pretty much guaranteed to diminish over time too. As more and more of the Asian middle and upper classes emerge they're going to drive demand for Asian cultural products. You can already see this happening with the global appeal of Korean pop music and Hong Kong cinema, for example.
- NoPiece 14y agoI have a ton of respect for both Singapore and Hong Kong, and would love the opportunity to live and work in Singapore. I just don't see them as exporters of consumer electronics trends. I think it is for a couple reasons. One is that a lot of consumer electronics devices are content oriented, and domestic content has shaped the ecosystem (e.g., music -> itunes -> ipod). The other is scale. Japan has been the biggest influencer in the past (Walkman, Nintendo). It was a big enough economy to have its own whole healthy video game industry that it could export over to the US. I think the growing influence of Korea correlates to the healthy growth of the size of economy since the 1997 asian fiscal crisis.
- cageface 14y agoI don't see Singapore as an exporter of trends but more as a bellwether. As living standards in other Asian countries, at least among the affluent, approach the standard of Singapore's, it seems likely to me that we'll see trends first seen in SG repeated elsewhere.
- newplagiarist 14y agoI think part of the problem when discussing fashion is that it is a qualitative discussion and not quantitative. It's really hard to gather or generate data on fashion appeal, or any other art form really. If you're asking for localized sales figures even those could lag behind by several months of the fashion trend. Which can start off in small trend setting circles and expand as word of mouth spreads on what is in. So, I think data this early would not be as pertinent to the conversation as it would be several months down the line to see if this articles thesis is justified.
- acchow 14y agoI'm culturally Asian and have a great number (>50) of relatives living in Asia (mostly Hong Kong). My cousins sound exactly like this...