“A new study suggests that the iPhone 5c is grabbing less share of the iPhone market than Apple’s iPhone 4s did a year ago when it was the mid-range option,” Ina Fried reports for Re/code. “The iPhone 5s, by contrast, has grabbed a larger share of the market than the iPhone 5 did in its first full quarter on the market.”
“The iPhone 5s accounted for 59 percent of October through December U.S. sales, according to a study from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners,” Fried reports. “That compares to the iPhone 5′s 50 percent of sales when it was the high-end model a year ago.”
“The iPhone 5c, meanwhile, represented 27 percent of sales, less than the 32 percent that the iPhone 4s had a year ago when it was the mid-range model,” Fried reports. “‘If the old iPhone 5 had been the mid-priced phone, we expect that it would have sold a higher percentage of iPhones than the 5c did, as previous mid-priced legacy iPhones have,’ CIRP analyst Josh Lowitz said. ‘The 5c seems to have been designed to force certain buyers to the 5s.'”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: You heard it on MacDailyNews first (on the very day the iPhone 5c and 5s were unveiled, no less):
Why the hell would anyone buy an iPhone 5c instead of an iPhone 5s?
It seems to me that Apple is using the iPhone 5c as a tool to push buyers to the 5s (well, at least those buyers who can grasp a simple value equation).
Once Apple gets the customer to the websites or into the stores and the prospective buyer can see and/or hold both phones and learn that they’re only separated by a mere $100, my guess is that Apple figures they’ll have plenty of upsales occurring. Upsales that will boost Apple’s iPhone margins nicely. — SteveJack, MacDailyNews, September 10, 2013