Demand for Iphone is strong

IN REACTION to stories that the iPhone won't fare well outside the US, mobile market measurer, M:metrics says that, significantly, seven million Brits have a strong interest in buying Apple's musicphone.

According to Paul Goode, a senior analyst, with M:metrics in London, Apple didn't have much of a choice in bringing out a cellular enabled Ipod. Just under 10 per cent of Brits are already listening to music on their mobile phones.

"That's a significant proportion," Goode stressed. "Particularly since 50 per cent of that music is 'side-loaded'." Side-loading has become the accepted term for music which is download by some means other than over the mobile network.

"Introducing the Iphone was a necessary defensive move for Apple," Goode maintained. "If they hadn't done so, they would have lost market share [to music phones]."

Apple's publicity machine is doing a good job given that M:metrics says that 56 per cent of Brits and 64 per cent of North Americans are aware of the Iphone.

Goode revealed that the situation for Apple in Europe is a very curious one. It isn't as dominant a dedicated music player supplier as in the States so it has market share to catch up on.

So the Apple brand in Europe isn't as strong. Conversely, however, smartphones are far more popular in Europe than in the USA.

For example, out of 730 models of mobile handset available in the UK at least 240 of them are capable of playing MP3 music files.

More impressive still, of those people who own both a dedicated MP3 player and a musicphone, 40 per cent of them are using the handset as their primary music player.

"Apple has no choice. It needs the Iphone in Europe to increase market share, otherwise it will end up losing out to musicphones," Goode concluded.

In case you're wondering how M:metrics got to the figure of 7 million potential Brit Iphone purchasers, here's the maths.

M:metrics says 56 per cent of all UK mobile users have expressed some interest in (ie heard of) the Iphone. They're extrapolating these figures from a sample base of 5,293 UK mobile subscribers who are constantly quizzed.

There's roughly 44 million phone users in all (UK), and with half (56 per cent) interested that totals around 22 million users. Of those circa a third (30 per cent) are seriously interested' in the Iphone. Which gives us the total of 7 million.

Meanwhile, there's so much speculation as to how much the Iphone might cost in Europe, that there's even a web site dedicated to the subject. Check out Appleiphoneprice.com here. µ

L'INQ
M:metrics