iPhone is big down under, survey claims

Jonny Evans
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November 04, 2009
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The smartphone wars continue, with a bevy of touch-type-phones attempting to cast a dent in the Apple iPhone broadside, but in Australia at least, iPhone appears set to become Australia’s strongest mobile phone brand, according to a survey by Millward Brown.

The 2009 BrandZ brand equity survey of 400 Australian mobile phone users shows Apple’s phone is perceived to have more “brand strengths” than Nokia, Motorola, Sony Ericsson and BlackBerry.

It also attracted the highest brand “voltage”, by which the researchers measure a brand’s predicted growth. They believe Apple will increase its iPhone marketshare in Australia next year as a result. At present, just 9% of the survey group own the Apple mobile.

The iPhone was outperformed by Nokia in brand metrics including “bonding”, reflecting a “stronger relationship with its customers”.

Daren Poole, managing director of Millward Brown Sydney, said: “After little more than 12 months in the Australian market, the iPhone has gained a strong brand position. Our research has confirmed it is now on par with Nokia in terms of popularity, even though only 9% of those surveyed actually owned an iPhone. This bodes well for iPhone when those consumers upgrade their handsets…The iPhone is well on its way to becoming Australia’s mobile phone brand of choice.”

Comments (3)

Ollie (not verified) | November 04, 2009 - 6:31am

There still seems to be a iphone shortage in Australia. I am still waiting for my 32GB 3GS from Vodafone that I ordered nearly 3 weeks ago. And it's not even listed as out of stock on their webpage, unlike the 8GB models.

 

 

Au iPhone (not verified) | November 04, 2009 - 2:37pm

Ollie,

You can sign up for a contract at an Apple Store with Vodafone (or Optus, or Telstra), and they always have stock.

Just visit http://www.apple.com/au/iphone/reserve/ and make a reservation.

PS: Hope you live in a decent city with a store.

PPS: Wow, this rich text editor sucks!

-AG- (not verified) | November 04, 2009 - 4:04pm

What you will find is that the site may say that they have stock but thats because they are going on the inventory that they have in their warehouse. If you go into your local shopping centre you will find that some "resellers" will have the stock. We found this when we were trying to get my wife a white 32gb 3Gs a few weeks ago. The actual Voda store told us that they had no stock but can order one in for us but it can take up to 3 weeks, another Voda store in the same centre said that the white models were limited production and they probably wont order any more in BUT they had a few 32gb black ones there if we really wanted one. We finally went to a Vodafone kiosk that had heaps of stock of all the colours and they were able to arrange the details there and then. Took all of 5 mins. The guy was saying that some stores just dont want to carry the stock because they are expensive handsets to have sitting on the shelves and when they know they can order one overnight and have it the next day most customers will wait. Plus it makes the customers feel like the store is going out of its way to find one for them. 

It sounds like Ollie has just got a slack store that has not bothered putting through the request for the stock yet or is waiting to do a bulk order and this means having to wait until say 10 phones need to be ordered.

 

The other reason why brands such as Sony and Nokia are bigger in Australia than iPhones is that companies such as Optus have marketed Apple as a business phone. Its hard to try and convince a customer that they need to upgrade their perfectly working mobile from say a Nokia 3110 to an iPhone, especially when that means that they have to upgrade their cap and pay handset payments and learn a new phones OS. Compared to Selling them a Nokia 2323 for no extra cost or something like $1 extra (charged to their first bill only).

If Apple wants to make their brand grow even more in Australia they need to do a few minor things, Increase the Retail Stores to each capital city, because resellers are driving away business. Have their resellers that they do have sell prepaid iphones and network unlocked models. This way unless you want a contract you wont have to deal with sales people that have no clue about the phone you are buying.