iPhone Most Popular US Handset & Most Reliable Comments

wow, this is getting out of hand :D

"...newly enlightened Yankee compatriots..." + "Amazingly the RAZR had been the top model for the previous 12 quarters" = Clouds with legs.

somebody (apple) make the first phone with a harddrive. i'm dying for one :D

@Geoff - now I'm no insider, but I do have (albeit low-key) contacts within Apple, O2 and Carphone Warehouse, and I know that there's way more than 250,000 iPhone units in use in the UK. But yes there's certainly significantly more Nokia N95's out there than that of Cupertino's mobile marvel :)

A market research company publishes a press release without detailing any sales figures or include corporate/enterprise purchases and this makes the iphone the official most popular handset in the US?

Square trade state that 80% of iphone come from drops, spills and other accidents and then claim to be the only place to get iphone accident protection.....

Am I missing something or do these seem more like sponsored press releases. I'd prefer to see sales figures from LG/Nokia/Apple or even the larger retailers before reading that something is official.

I'll be getting one in the new year so that'll add one more to the number of sales. The Sonos app will be the clincher. With all the Apple fanboys around I think I'll be quite embarassed answering calls in public though.

I've said it before and i'll say it again - Apple doesn't ultimately make the best-in-class of any device out there if you look at the spec-sheet alone. However, when you look at what you get for your money; the hardware+software+user experience, it takes SOME beating.. and the beat goes on...

Smells like just another Stevie J Victory

Where do I start? Oh yes, advertising! Apple spends more money than any other company, outside Japan, on advertising, and do you know why? Because they have to. The iPhone, like the iPod before it, is a fashion accessory. The majority of the people who buy an iPhone buy it because everybody wants one. It's a must-have item, a cool item, something new and shiny that people need to have so people can think they're something they're not. If you think this is wrong, do you recall the other fashion handset that was usurped from first place? Apple has marketed the iPhone all over the world, on TV, on billboards, in magazines, in TV shows; the list of product placements, in the latter, is long and more than any other handset on the market.

Regardless of whether people say "I bought one because it offers the best Internet experience on any handset", the iPhone doesn't cater to the masses, it caters to the people who want to buy into the whole Apple way of thinking. If you look at the figures of the people who bought an iPhone, they didn’t buy I because it has all these great features, such as full HTML browsing, GPS, multi-touch functionality etc, they bought it for the reasons outlined in the first paragraph and so they can access Bebo and YouTube easier than normal.

If these are the type of users who will dictate the trend of new handsets to market, I shudder to think what the handset market will be like in 2-3 years.

No one's said this yet, so I might as well throw it into the mix:

The iphone is also a really good mobile gaming platform. Its all very well that other 'phones have more advanced features and applications, but if they are less than completely intuitive to use, then people (ie people like me) are put off from using them. My experience is limited, but I haven't found games on other 'phones to be nearly as engaging as the iphone games.

Finally, some words about fashion. Why do some people think that just because something is fashionable, its not good? Ok, sometimes fashion is just a case of jumping on the bandwagon, but often, the reason why something is popular is because its actually very good. Why shouldn't the fact that something is beautiful to use not be as important as this or that technical feature? If you don't believe that beauty is important, you may have some techie moral high ground, but just accept that you will always be in the minority!

@Rsaeire, I'm a software developer so as such I'm pretty techie and have had all sorts of fancy mobiles. The I-Phone certainly is low on feature spec, eg. crap camera etc but for me it's been the most usefully phone I've ever had. Why, you might ask, because it's so simple to use, yeah the Nokia's are a good spec phone, but I never could be bothered to use half it's features because it was too cumbersome. To be honest I'd say I'd feel lost without my I-Phone now, something I've not been able to say about a mobile phone for a long time.

The iPhone maybe the best in class, but that's because Apple marketing made a new class so they could say it was the best!

Rsaeire is on the money. Apple have flooded the market with advertising, the people I know who've bought one don't know what it can do. They mostly say "It looks nice" rather than anything about the actual device! And some of them barely know about any other device because most companies spend money on making decent hardware rather than marketing that can polish crap.