Old people buy iPhones, says HTC US boss

Apple’s iPhones are cool, right?

Wrong, according to HTC’s American chief Martin Fichter. Speaking at the Mobile Future Forward conference in Seattle, Fichter spoke of how a recent trip to his daughter’s college dorm room and a look into student’s mobile gadgets revealed a surprising shift in the smartphone Cool Handset League tables. It’s fusty older professionals, not hip students, buying iPhones claims the HTC boss.

“None of them has an iPhone because they told me: ‘My dad has an iPhone.’ There’s an interesting thing that’s going on in the market. The iPhone becomes a little less cool than it was. They were carrying HTCs. They were carrying Samsungs. They were even carrying some Chinese manufacturer’s devices,” said Fichter.

“Macbook Airs are cool. iPhones are not that cool anymore. We here are using iPhones, but our kids don’t find them that cool anymore.”

Sure, it’s in a HTC boss’s best interests to take a swipe at Apple, the smartphone market leaders, and with Apple’s cool badge still a genuine selling point for the Cupertino handsets, it’s a risky but potentially rewarding target to take aim at with the iPhone 5 launch just over the horizon.

And certainly, the economic factors would indeed support Fichter’s theory; the Android equivalent to an iPhone 4 or iPhone 3GS is often considerably cheaper than the £500+ you’d pay for Apple’s top model. That’s a fair few more pints at the student union if you opt for an Android then.

Via: Mashable