Tim Cook has big plans for Apple's new iPhone 6 and 6 Plus.
In an interview with The Wall Street Journal, the Apple CEO said the new iPhones Apple unveiled on Tuesday will prompt "the mother of all upgrades." The phones have larger screens than any previous models.
Cook is right: As we previously reported, millions of people are about to upgrade their iPhones, and Apple is set to have a record-breaking year in iPhone sales.
But Cook also told The Journal's Daisuke Wakabayashi that Android owners will consider switching to the latest version of the iPhone, not only for the larger screens, but also because the phones are “appreciably better in every single way.”
It's true that Apple will likely get millions of Android customers to switch to the new iPhone. Until now -- or Sept. 19, when the new phones go on sale -- people who wanted a phone larger than 4 inches had no choice but to go with Android or, less likely, another operating system. Now, they can turn to Apple.
Android owners also aren't as loyal to Android products as Apple customers are to Apple's products: According to a survey from 451 Research/Yankee Group, before the bigger screens were announced, 16 percent of Android users in the U.S. said they intended to switch to Apple. (Only 5 percent of Apple customers said they intend to switch to Android.)
Last time Apple increased the screen size of its phone -- in 2012, with the iPhone 5 -- 24 percent of the people who bought it in the first quarter of the following year were Android owners, according to survey data from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP), a Chicago-based market research firm.
Mike Levin, a partner at CIRP, expects a similar switching pattern this time around.
"The features on the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus -- at least at first glance -- are sufficiently compelling that they will peel off even more Android customers than they did with the launch of the iPhone 5 and the 5S/5C," Levin told The Huffington Post.
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