Killing Them Hardly » consumer

Revolutionary Grape.

Peter — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 17:46:45 +0000

My friend Tom Caestecker in Chicago recently wrote this piece about emerging wine trends for the examiner.com – check it out!

Mobile Brand Loyalty

Peter — Fri, 25 Jun 2010 17:31:35 +0000

A survey by Piper Jaffray yesterday reveals that most early iPhone 4 buyers were upgrading from previous iPhones — and remaining loyal to Apple — and that very few were switching to AT&T from other carriers.

Specifically, here are highlights from Piper analyst Gene Munster’s note this morning:

77% of iPhone 4 buyers polled in three cities (San Francisco, New York, and Minneapolis) were upgrading from old iPhones. That’s up from 56% last year and 38% in 2008, and represents brand loyalty that is likely unmatched in the mobile industry.
16% of buyers were switching to AT&T from other carriers, down from 28% last year. Apple REALLY needs to add another carrier if it wants to maximize sales. (Preferably Verizon Wireless, the nation’s biggest.)
54% purchased the $299 32 GB model, up from 43% who bought the 32 GB iPhone 3GS last year.
28% of iPhone 4 buyers owned an iPad, which confirms that the people waiting in line were the most serious of the Apple fanatics. Of the 72% who did not own an iPad, 39% said they would probably buy one within the next year, while 61% said they would not.
65% were Mac owners, down from 75% at the first iPhone launch in 2007.

The takeaway: Apple has a reliable stable of devoted users who will likely upgrade to the newest iPhone every year, assuming there’s nothing better on the market.

Hello Thelonius!

Peter — Fri, 18 Jun 2010 15:24:04 +0000

Pleased to say that this blog has been updated to WordPress 3 – ‘Thelonius”. So far so good. We’re going to get the Annunciation Interactive site updated soon as well. From what I’m seeing, WP3 continues the evolution of WordPress toward a more general content manager versus its blog-centric roots…

Bionic Action.

Peter — Fri, 11 Jun 2010 15:02:58 +0000

Found this online – a 1973 ad from Kenner – makers of the Six Million Dollar Man bionic action figure. This, along with the Evel Knievel figure, was the bomb back in the day. The ad was in heavy rotation in early to mid-Seventies Marvel comics.

Solar Surface Area.

Peter — Wed, 09 Jun 2010 14:30:03 +0000

The attached infographic shows the surface area required for powering the Earth with solar panels alone.

Look Upon My Works…

Peter — Tue, 25 May 2010 17:32:39 +0000

Apropos of nothing in particular, I really like this image found on Flickr.

Flash Wars.

Peter — Mon, 17 May 2010 15:12:08 +0000

Kind of funny back & forth this past week from Apple and Adobe. Adobe apparently debuted a strange passive-aggressive ‘We Heart Apple’ campaign – while conducting a flame war with Steve Jobs et al. Apple’s (apparently fake) response is below. Heh.

TrustoCorp Truth.

Peter — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 14:04:56 +0000

Check out this great Flickr set here. Decorating the streets of Los Angeles, Miami and New York City, street artist TrustoCorp adds personality to Metropolitan areas with these hand painted street signs. While all of the signs are amusing, some of them seem to carry a social message, while others come off a bit lighter. I can just imagine a person looking up at one of these signs in confusion, before breaking out in a great big smile.

Square Coke Box.

Peter — Mon, 29 Mar 2010 00:58:45 +0000

Really neat packaging design concepts, apparently from a freshman student. Good article here.

Power Users Dominate.

Peter — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 22:57:37 +0000

Interesting stats article today on mashable.com about Twitter users’ usage. I was going to link it up here, but the front-page PopURLs mention crashed mashable. It basically said something to the effect that only about 21% of users had actually tweeted more than 10 times. Something like 34% had only tweeted once. I’m intrigued by the Twitter phemonemon, but wonder if it will ever reach the mainstream penetration that mediums of the past once did. Perhaps, perhaps not… Will anything, ever again? Or is this fragmentation, in full view?

Mashable is back up – here’s the link.