Marcio Jose Sanchez/AP
We knew Apple’s iPhone sales were going to be good this quarter. The holiday buying frenzy in November and December always gives Apple’s numbers a substantial boost. But nobody expected sales quite as high as Apple achieved in its first fiscal of 2015.
Apple sold a whopping 74.4 million iPhones over the 90 day period ending December 27th. On average, that translates to over 34,00 iPhones sold every hour, every day of the quarter. Analysts expected numbers around 65 million, and the previous record, 51 million iPhone sales in the first quarter of last year, seems paltry by comparison.
“Demand for the iPhone has been staggering, shattering our highest expectations,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in the company’s earnings call.
Apple did not differentiate iPhone 6 from iPhone 6 Plus sales in the numbers, but Cook said that the quarter’s sales were driven by “unprecedented popularity” of these models, and that the iPhone 6 was the most popular phone model last quarter.
Cook also said that in some geographic regions, the iPhone 6 Plus was more popular, while in others the 6 was more popular. But he did not elaborate on specific examples. According to an independent report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners released on Monday, the iPhone 6 made up an estimated 45 percent of iPhone sales and the 6 Plus made up 30 percent of sales.
Where did this incredible demand come from? A couple of factors are at play. First, a new iPhone industrial design seemingly always translates into a greater proportion of iPhone upgrades among existing iOS users. If people are going to fork up hundreds of dollars for a new phone, they want the experience to be markedly better, and, shallow as it may be, many people want others to be able to tell they have the latest and greatest Apple gadget (take, for example, how quickly the gold iPhone 5s sold out last year).
But more importantly were the newcomers to Apple’s platform.
“We saw more new customers to iPhone than we’d ever seen before,” Cook said. And while detailed research numbers aren’t in yet, he said that Apple had a higher rate of Android switchers than it had after the three previous iPhone launches.
Apple, for the first time, offers iPhones with a greater than four-inch screen size. This is something Android phone makers have offered for years, and Android phone owners have grown fond of—particularly those with larger hands.
Anecdotally, I know of multiple new iPhone owners that were swayed away from the Android platform by the new iPhones’ larger size, and also its superb camera quality. In South Korea, Samsung’s home turf, the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus managed to nab over 30 percent of smartphone sales, a first for a foreign smartphone maker.
And as smartphone ownership continues to increase globally, it’s likely that many former dumb phone owners opted for iPhones, both new models and price-reduced older phones. With a two year contract, you can grab a 16 GB iPhone 5s for $100, or an iPhone 5c for free. It may seem like everyone and their mom has a smartphone, but in truth, there are still many, many people who are still upgrading.
On a larger note, iPad sales continue their subtle slide: 21.4 million sales compared to expectations of 22 million. Cook is still optimistic and bullish on the iPad in the long run, particularly because of first time buyer rates, which run in the 50 to 70 percent range in several major established markets, including the U.S. Cook thinks it’s possible that the upgrade cycle is longer for tablets, somewhere between an iPhone and a PC. “We haven’t been in the business long enough to say with certainty,” Cook said. He also said there is probably some level of Apple cannibalization going on, with the Mac on one side (which garnered 5.5 million in sales) and iPhone on the other.
Yeah, we’d agree with that one. Especially on the iPhone front.
No comments:
Post a Comment