Apple By Matthew Humphries Dec. 21, 2015 9:29 am
Apple really wants as many consumers in the world as possible to have an iPhone in their pocket. Advertising is used to try and tempt a purchase, but once an iPhone has been bought, the advertising should stop, right? Not so.
There’s growing complaints that Apple is pushing full screen adverts to older iPhone model owners to urge them to upgrade to an iPhone 6s. The advert appears when the App Store is opened and must be dismissed before you can actually access the store. So they are going as far as blocking actions in order to make you view this advert.
The advert looks like this:
It seems the advert being displayed is triggered by upgrading to iOS 9.2. Unless you already own an iPhone 6s you can expect to see it appear on older hardware along with the option to skip, learn more, or upgrade. Notice how the skip option is separate from the other two? It’s in a less obvious place to make it harder to see and choose.
Just like Apple’s iPhone smart battery case, this makes little sense. The users being targeted already own an iPhone, are already using Apple services, and more than likely are tied into a contract for their phone. The majority of the people seeing this advert are going to be happy with their existing smartphone, unable to upgrade due to a contract, or can’t afford to right now.
It’s unclear how often the advert appears, but the fact it is full screen and blocks what you were trying to do is also strange for Apple. And why do they need to do this anyway? The iPhone 6s continues to sell extremely well, so there’s no need to put marketing pressure on existing customers.
[iPhone 6s image courtesy of LWYang on Flickr]