Tuesday, December 18, 2012

Apple Customers Spend More Money On Apple Things | The Awl:

These may be true facts, but another bit of Apple news out today suggests what everybody already knows: Apple customers have plenty of money to spend on more Apple things.

The iPad Mini, for example, was marketed as an actual iPad tablet computer. It was assumed by many analysts that iPad Mini sales would "cannibalize" new sales of the full-sized iPad Retina. This assumption, however, was based on another assumption that nobody would ever make if they walked into any upper-middle-class apartment and saw the absurd number of Apple devices elegantly crowding every recently dusted surface: multiple iPhones and iPads, of course, but also the latest iMac in pride-of-place nook atop a $2,300 sliver of desk, and several MacBooks gleaming from the kitchen counter and coffee table and bonus room desk, and also the white Airport wifi stations blinking with contentment from various line-of-sight electrical outlets, and even an AppleTV unit and a Time Capsule backup system tucked here and there.

Apple customers don't know what "Oh I already have one" even means. It is as foreign to them as a Windows login screen. So, more than half of all iPad Mini sales are going to existing Apple customers; only 47% are new to the iPad market.