It is pretty obvious that the latest iPhone 8 launch was much quieter than its predecessors. Queues are almost non-existent while telcos have scaled down on their launch events compared to previous years.
According to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) in the US, the iPhone 8 isn’t doing very well and surprisingly, its older models are outselling it by a huge margin.
Traditionally, “tick” models (non-S) usually dominate sales in the US. The iPhone 6/6 Plus does 46% of total sales during its launch quarter in 2014 while the iPhone 7/7 Plus did 43% of sales in September 2016. Meanwhile, the “tock” S models which are basically incremental updates are not doing as well with the iPhone 6s/6s Plus doing 24% in September 2015.
When the iPhone 8 was released, CIRP suggests that the iPhone 8/8 Plus accounted just 16% of all iPhone sold during its launch period. Most buyers were going after last year’s iPhone 7/7 Plus which dominated 58% of sales. That’s largely due to its reduced pricing right after the iPhone 8 was announced. As a comparison, when the iPhone 7/7 Plus was launched, the reduced iPhone 6s/6s Plus accounted 35% of sales in September 2016.
It is worth pointing out that CIRP’s data is based on a survey conducted with 500 customers in the US. While the sample size appears to be small, it is still a good indicator of consumer sentiment.
Some are suggesting that significant number of users are skipping the iPhone 8 for the iPhone X. While that’s a possibility, the high price tag and supply constraints would probably affect its sales numbers in the coming months. The iPhone X might probably do better in countries with better telco contract subsidies as it would probably cost slightly more each month over the iPhone 8 Plus.
While the iPhone 8/X is their latest and greatest, the iPhone 7 and iPhone 6s are still very capable devices by today’s standards. Looking at the current iPhone pricing, there are currently 8 iPhone models or 9 if you including the upcoming iPhone X.
With so many options available, some models are overlapping each other in terms of price. For example at RM2,749, you could either get an iPhone 6s 128GB, iPhone 6s Plus 32GB or an iPhone 7 32GB.
If you haven’t seen it yet, you can check out the full price list including the iPhone X over here.
[ SOURCE ]
