React: Thousands of People are Rushing to Ditch the iPhone 6

With the iPhone 6S, Apple has successfully broken the perception that the ‘S’-model is simply an incremental upgrade, ignored by most.

3D touch, a studio-quality camera and rose-gold (verging on pink) finish make the iPhone 6S stand further apart from its non-‘S’ predecessor than any iPhone that came before it.

In Tim Cook’s own words, “the only thing that’s changed is everything.”

Every year, this is the time when when people decide whether it’s worth upgrading their current phone.

At $199 on a two-year contract, it’s no small undertaking – particularly if you’re already one year deep into your iPhone 6 or iPhone 6+ contract.

We’ve been monitoring the Twitter firehose for people’s opinions about the new products. Using the same social technology as world-leading retailers, we found thousands of people with an ‘intent to buy’ Apple products.

iPhone – as predicted – is the most desirable product.

By turning this technology on its head, we’ve also ‘intent to sell’ mentions increased even more.

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A Twitter storm

During the course of the event, the #AppleEvent hashtag was tweeted around 179K times.

The biggest spike in mentions came as an executive from Microsoft took to the stage, with the demonstration of Microsoft Office on the iPad Pro.

In this minute, close to 2,065 tweets were sent.

After that, the iPad pro announcement itself saw 1,674 tweets sent in a single minute.

1,614 were sent when the iPhone 6S was revealed, the ‘live pictures’ (Apple’s spin on video) saw 1,366 tweets.

Overall, the social media sentiment was overwhelming positive – rarely dipping below 80% positive.

Again, Microsoft stepping on stage caused the sentiment to dip most negative.

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Everyone wants an iPhone, but not their current one

Using Brandwatch’s advanced analysis, we’ve seen a surge in people wanting to buy Apple products.

Last week, 31 people expressed an ‘intent to buy’ Apple TV on social media. On the day of #AppleEvent alone, that number was 304. Similarly, ‘intent to buy’ the iPhone increased by 20 times.

Overall, the iPhone proved to be the most desirable product. The new rose gold finish is available exclusively on the iPhone 6S, leading to a wave of color-envy.

 

Retailers use this type of social intelligence to generate leads. Thousands of social media users have just identified themselves as being in the market for an iPhone, iPad or Apple TV. Best Buy, Walmart, Verizon and more should be competing for these easy customers.

‘Intent to sell’ turns this technology around.

Suddenly, we’ve found thousands of people who want to get rid of their phones. We’re about to see a bunch of second-hand iPhones and iPads flood the market.

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Listening to conversations like this has boosted sales and proven the value of social media campaigns for thousands of companies.

We’ve explored industry trends in social listening with our consumer tech report.

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If you’re interested in covering our data, please contact [email protected]

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