On 23rd Sept, Apple Inc.(NASDAQ:AAPL) announced that it has sold over nine million new iPhone 5S and iPhones 5C in just three days after the launch of the new iPhones on September 20. Market analysts watched closely for patterns emerging due to the launch of these phones.
Apple did not release the sales breakdown for the iPhones 5S and 5C but it was speculated that the iPhone 5C’s sales will boost higher than the 5S variant due to its low price. Localytics, the leading analytics and marketing platform for mobile and web apps examined over 20 million unique iPhones and investigated the breakdown by United States carriers and global activations. It was interesting to see that the 5S variant of iPhone outsold the 5C variant by a factor of 3.7 worldwide in the first weekend it was available. In less than 3 days, the iPhone 5S and 5C now represent about 1.36% of all the total number of iPhones activated in the U.S. market across the top 4 carriers, AT&T, Verizon, Sprint and T-Mobile. 1.05% of all iPhones in the U.S. are iPhones 5S and just 0.31% are iPhone 5C, which means that the 5S outsold the 5C by a factor of 3.4x, that can be translated to 2.64 million iPhone 5C as compared to 6.36 million iPhone 5S.
In the United States, where the consumers are richer and the difference in subsidized-price between the two was only $100, the inclination towards the higher-end iPhone 5S rather than the 5C which is nothing more than a re-packaged iPhone 5 with new software update is not unexpected. Moreover, the hardcore fans who want the highest-end phone the moment it is launched would have picked the 5S over the 5C.
AT&T-Most Preferred Carrier
So far, out of the top 4 carriers in the US market, AT&T saw the highest adoption rate for both 5S and 5C. Activations on AT&T represented 0.67% of all activated iPhones against 0.51% for Verizon, followed by Sprint (0.12%) and T-Mobile (0.07).
Worldwide Adoption of iPhone 5S & iPhone 5C
It was not only in the United States that the iPhone 5S outsold the 5C, the pattern was seen to be similar globally. In some countries, e.g. Japan, sales of iPhone 5S outpaced the sales of 5C by a factor of 5x. However, it is not yet clear whether consumers in emerging markets are buying more 5Cs compared to 5Ss. It’d be interesting to see how the pattern changes in the next few days.
Adoption Highest In The U.S.
As of 8 pm EST, Sunday, September 22, the percentage of active new iPhones was seen to be the highest in the United States, almost twice as much as all other countries and regions combined.
Assuming the average base price of $649 for iPhone 5S (16GB Model) as $549 for the iPhone 5C (16GB), Apple earned an average of $1.44 billion from the 5C and $4.19 billion from the 5S. The average total earnings from both the 5S and the 5C could be $5.56 billion approximately. Apple generated more in revenues in just three days than what BlackBerry was sold for!!
Source: Localytics
