Is the iPhone losing its 'cool'?
They may be the hottest property when it comes to the mobile phone market, but HTC chief says the iPhone is "not cool any more" and a phone for old people.
The popular Apple product remains the top selling phone alongside its predecessor the iPhone 3GS, but acting president of HTC America Martin Fichter believes the phone is beginning to lose its cache of cool, technology website Mashable reports.
Fichter used a story about taking his daughter to Reed College in Portland as evidence of this downward trend, telling the Mobile Future Forward conference in Seattle how her new dorm buddies had shunned the Apple product.
“None of them has an iPhone,” Fichter said, “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.
“Macbook Airs are cool. iPhones are not that cool any more. We here are using iPhones, but our kids don’t find them that cool any more," Fichter said
Whether the experience of Fichter's daughter holds up in the real world is yet to be determined, but the story reflects HTC's aggressive stance in pushing their new range of phones in the market to challenge Apple's current dominance.
HTC currently enjoy a market share of nine per cent in the US, but their growth in the hotly contested mobile phone business will be challenged with the impending release of the iPhone 5.
That could ultimately determine whether Apple has been able to keep its cool over its other mobile rivals.
