How Apple sold 9 million iPhones this weekend
Just a few of the nine million. AP Photo/Eugene Hoshiko
Apple this morning said it sold nine million units of
its new iPhones, the 5s and 5c, in the three days since they became
available on Friday Sept. 20. That’s Apple’s best opening weekend yet,
despite criticism that the iPhone 5s is no great leap and that the 5c is just a repackaged iPhone 5.
When it launched the iPhone 5 last year, Apple sold five million units
in its opening weekend; the iPhone 4S sold four million the year before.
A back-of-the-envelope calculation using last quarter’s average sale
price of $580 suggests over $5 billion in gross sales for Apple this
weekend.
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Many
expected a surge in sales thanks to the iPhone 5c. That appears to have
been the exact opposite of what happened. Mobile analytics firm
Localytics says that the more expensive iPhone 5s sold nearly four times as much.
Indeed, Tim Cook confirmed that the 5s is more popular: “The demand for
the new iPhones has been incredible, and while we’ve sold out of our
initial supply of iPhone 5s, stores continue to receive new iPhone
shipments regularly,” he is quoted as saying in the press release.
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So
what accounts for the remarkable success of Apple’s latest offerings?
Most obviously, this release marks the first time that China got the
iPhone on the same day as other important markets. In December 2012,
when the iPhone 5 went on sale in China nearly a month after elsewhere,
it sold two million units in the first few days. Even assuming that
number has remained the same, that’s a significant boost right there.
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Also
in Asia, Apple finally came to an arrangement with DoCoMo, Japan’s
biggest mobile network operator. With more than 40% of Japanese
subscribers, that’s another vast market for the new iPhones to tap into.
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So
much for why the numbers jumped so dramatically over the past two
years. What about the impressive, and counter-intuitive success of the
more expensive 5s? That is possibly the result of a basic human
behavior: the existence of a cheaper (and in this case plastic) item
makes the marginally more expensive one that much more attractive. In
addition, subsidies in some parts of the world have been changed around
to add to the impression.
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To
be sure, 9 million phones in three days is an impressive number
whichever way you look at it. But it says less about the new range of
iPhones than it does about the fact Apple phones continue to be
desirable largely for being Apple phones. That is a position few companies ever achieve. But it is not something that can last forever.
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