ApplePay Revisited...
This article was the basis of something far too tantalizing to pass up.
Seems like I was right. ApplePay was doomed from the start. The article also makes an excellent point which highlights just how bad the situation really is. It points out that the survey the evidence is based on only includes iPhone 6 users and claims them to be early adopters and if early adopters aren't widely using new features, who should assume that as the hardware gets in more hands it will become a more popular feature?
I'd also point out another thing... less than 5% of purchases in general might be a good thing for a new product or service. But that isn't what was reported on. It is less than 5% of iPhone 6 users shopping at stores that accepted ApplePay. Given the market share of iPhone in general, and then the subsection of that market which are iPhone 6 users, this is a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of overall sales. And wait! It also only included retailers supporting ApplePay, so it is yet another tiny fraction of that value. Were this extrapolated to overall sales, the actual percentage of sales would be immeasurably small.
Apple's biggest mistake was unveiling this simultaneously with the first wave of devices to support it.
Apple has clout and sway. But businesses tend to go where the money is. And as I argued before, even if every single iPhone 6 user loved and wanted to use ApplePay for everything, it would still be a long while before it made sense for retailers and other establishments to go out of their way to support it.
If Apple wanted a proprietary system they should have devised something that would work on existing iOS devices or waiting until the iPhone 7 or 8 launch to unveil this. A few years ago they'd only need support back one generation of products, but as demand cools many are holding onto phones longer or just outright buying older models. So, by the time the iPhone 8 rolls (2 years after the 6 more or less if they maintain the norm) most Apple users at least would already own compatible hardware. Then Apple could at least say that effectively their entire user base is eligible to participate.
I'm not sure however if even that would be enough to make it successful. And, now that they've flopped once, they've lost credibility in this space. But, if it were the first time over again, and they went with a system that could work on most existing smart phones (let's say Android 4.0+ and iPhone 4S and beyond), I think it would have been a massive success.
It may too early to call it officially. But after the second week I don't think I even heard ApplePay once in the news or online. No one even really seems to care that its flopping.
Seems like I was right. ApplePay was doomed from the start. The article also makes an excellent point which highlights just how bad the situation really is. It points out that the survey the evidence is based on only includes iPhone 6 users and claims them to be early adopters and if early adopters aren't widely using new features, who should assume that as the hardware gets in more hands it will become a more popular feature?
I'd also point out another thing... less than 5% of purchases in general might be a good thing for a new product or service. But that isn't what was reported on. It is less than 5% of iPhone 6 users shopping at stores that accepted ApplePay. Given the market share of iPhone in general, and then the subsection of that market which are iPhone 6 users, this is a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of a tiny fraction of overall sales. And wait! It also only included retailers supporting ApplePay, so it is yet another tiny fraction of that value. Were this extrapolated to overall sales, the actual percentage of sales would be immeasurably small.
Apple's biggest mistake was unveiling this simultaneously with the first wave of devices to support it.
Apple has clout and sway. But businesses tend to go where the money is. And as I argued before, even if every single iPhone 6 user loved and wanted to use ApplePay for everything, it would still be a long while before it made sense for retailers and other establishments to go out of their way to support it.
If Apple wanted a proprietary system they should have devised something that would work on existing iOS devices or waiting until the iPhone 7 or 8 launch to unveil this. A few years ago they'd only need support back one generation of products, but as demand cools many are holding onto phones longer or just outright buying older models. So, by the time the iPhone 8 rolls (2 years after the 6 more or less if they maintain the norm) most Apple users at least would already own compatible hardware. Then Apple could at least say that effectively their entire user base is eligible to participate.
I'm not sure however if even that would be enough to make it successful. And, now that they've flopped once, they've lost credibility in this space. But, if it were the first time over again, and they went with a system that could work on most existing smart phones (let's say Android 4.0+ and iPhone 4S and beyond), I think it would have been a massive success.
It may too early to call it officially. But after the second week I don't think I even heard ApplePay once in the news or online. No one even really seems to care that its flopping.
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