Morgan Stanley: Potent mix of new and current customers driving Apple’s iPhone 4 sales

“One of the unanswered questions about Apple’s latest hit product is how many of the 600,000 iPhone 4s that were pre-sold on Tuesday were ordered by iPhone owners upgrading from their older models and how many by new customers who’d never owned an iPhone before,” Philip Elmer-DeWitt reports for Fortune.

“Morgan Stanley’s Katy Huberty… in a note to clients issued Wednesday evening… cites a proprietary Morgan Stanley survey that suggests the upgrade rate will be more than 50%, but not that much more,” Elmer-DeWitt reports. “Even 50% is considerably higher than the 18% upgrade rate found in a November 2008 survey and 25% since the launch of the original iPhone in 2007.”

“A loyal and growing installed base is a good thing for Apple, she argues. She estimates that if 30% of current iPhone owners upgrade this year, Apple will sell 42 million units in 2010,” Elmer-DeWitt reports. “If 50% upgrade, it will sell 48 million. In her model, the iPhone installed base rises from about 30 million at the end of 2009 to 100 million by the end of 2011.”

Elmer-DeWitt reports, “She adds that AT&T’s introduction of tiered data pricing, which can reduce the total cost of owning an iPhone by 20% or more, may also be driving the rush of early pre-orders.”

Full article here.

[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]