The retail launch of Apple"s iPhone 4S on Friday seems to have been a success. That success could be bad news for the smartphone"s numerous rivals. Reuters reports that it informally polled 127 people who waited in line at various Apple retail stores around the world on Friday. While the majority of people in line were going to upgrade from older versions of the iPhone, 28 of them said they were switching from a smartphone made by one of Apple"s competitors.
Some of the people surveyed has previously owned Blackberry-based phones and said they were switching to the iPhone 4S because they were frustrated with the long and widespread online outages that hit those phones earlier this week. A fashion publicist who bought the iPhone 4S in New York City said, "I am going into fashion and it"s like the official phone of the industry. Also, I am tired of the Blackberry issues, like stuff going down every six months."
A spokesperson who works for Verizon, one of the three US wireless carriers that sells the iPhone 4S, said on Friday, "We are seeing a nice mix of people who are first-time smartphone purchasers as well as those who are switching from competitors." Workers who are allowed by their companies to pick their own smartphones also seem to prefer Apple products. An Aite Group poll of 402 wealth managers showed that 45 percent of them would pick an iPhone or an iPad compared with just 14 percent who would pick a BlackBerry device.