Reacting to what he perceives as a lack of excitement within the “media bubble” that surrounds the iPhone 5, Piper Jaffray’s Gene Munster felt obliged to set his clients straight.
“We view the iPhone 5 as the Rolex of smartphones in terms of quality and build,” he wrote in a note issued early Friday, “while the majority of other phones are dominated by lesser quality plastic and feel more like Timexes. Why would someone buy a Timex when they can have a Rolex for the same price?”
Munster hits the nail on the head here. With Apple able to command such a high subsidy from carriers, the iPhone’s initial cost to the consumer makes it pretty much the same price as the plastic crap being churned out by competitors. Lower quality and a worse ecosystem is no way to go up against the iPhone.
Apple is going to blow away all estimates on this one.
