Community Corner

Is Apple Uncool?

Teens are abandoning the brand, some pundits say, and the crowd at one Apple store may support that theory.

Visiting an Apple store in the Bay Area recently, there were a lot more "mom jeans" and gray hairs than tweens.

Perhaps it was time of day—kids should be in school at 1 p.m. on a Tuesday—or the price tag on the products, but some tech bloggers have been talking about youth moving away from the Apple brand because they view it as tired, repetitive and, frankly, what their parents use.

Marketing experts say Millennial kids want newer products, such as the Microsoft Surface or Samsung Galaxy, according to a report released by Buzz Marketing Group.

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Teens—who are at an age when individuality can be paramount—also don't want the same gadget everyone else has, this Forbes columnist says.

And part of the problem might be that parents hand off their old Apple products to their kids while getting the latest greatest iPad or iPhone for themselves. Missing out on Siri and Retina Display apparently sends teens clamoring for other devices.

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So while teens are uploading the newest social media apps to their Samsung phones (Snapchat is in, Facebook is out), their parents are at the Apple store with me doing really un-hip things, like asking why computers no longer have disk drives.

By the way, I'm one stoked Gen-Xer (or absolute oldest Millennial) to own a new iPad mini.

What do you think? Has Apple peaked? Or do teens have it wrong and these other devices will just be flashes in the pan?


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