You might think iPhone owners are on the cutting edge of technology — well, they might have a high-tech device, but most couldn’t tell you the difference between 4G and a hole in the ground.
As the nation’s biggest wireless operators debate whose 4G is fastest, and techies argue over which carriers even have true 4G networks, it turns out that Joe Schmo either doesn’t know or doesn’t care. Take the results from a newly released survey by Retrevo, which shows that one-third (34 percent) of iPhone owners think they have a 4G device.
iPhone owners aren’t the only ones suffering from delusions of grandeur. The survey shows 24 percent of BlackBerry owners think they have 4G; of course, RIM, like Apple, doesn’t offer any 4G phones.
As a whole, only one-quarter of people surveyed said they want to buy a 4G device – and a lot of them believe 4G is too expensive and not worth what you pay.
The major carriers have obviously done a poor job of explaining the new technology; all those numbers about download and upload speeds don’t seem to mean much to the average person. And if you thought 4G wasn’t much more than a buzzword tossed around by the likes of AT&T, Verizon Wireless, Sprint and T-Mobile, at this point, you’d be right.
With most experts predicting the next iPhone still won’t be 4G-compatible, this would seem to be a good time for other manufacturers to find a better way to communicate to the public what their handsets can do with new wireless technology. Leave it to the carriers and the waters may remain muddied. Don’t expect Apple to take a hit; more than three in five iPhone owners surveyed said they would buy another iPhone, 4G or no 4G.
Could it really be up to the federal government to step in and help get things explained correctly? Congresswoman Anna Eshoo (D.-Calif.) has introduced a bill that could force broadband service providers to tell consumers like it is in their ads and marketing materials.
