“It appears that the iPhone 5C, Apple’s colorful low-end phone, is not selling well as Apple expected,” Ron Miller writes for CITEworld. “During Monday’s Apple earnings call, Tim Cook admitted that there was a shortage of iPhone 5Ss because they expected the iPhone 5C to sell better than it did. They spent the rest of the quarter trying to catch up with demand.”
“Why hasn’t the colorful lower-priced model caught on? Perhaps it’s because — as Cook suggested — people simply liked the high end finish and features of the 5S better, particularly Touch ID. Given the relatively small price gap between the two, most people seemed willing to pay the extra money to get it,” Miller writes. “The 5C might have been “unapologetically plastic,” but colorful plastic is apparently better suited for the Moto X and various Windows Phones. That’s what Palador co-founder Benjamin Robbins, whose firm helps companies define their mobile strategy, thinks. ‘Budget is not their brand. They historically have been a top tier brand. Their clientele has never responded well to cheap. Their customer loyalty is driven on the exclusivity of the brand. This is a manifestation of platform war whereby they won’t gain Android users by going cheap, they will only lessen their brand and diminish that elite status that their clients love,’ Robbins told me.”
“Apple sold 51 million iPhones in the last quarter. Android may be the leading platform in terms of market share, but Apple is still selling more smartphones and growing faster than every other smartphone vendor except Samsung (according to the latest IDC figures),” Miller writes. “If it wants to continue to do that, it looks like it needs to stay out of the shallow end, because it’s clearly not welcome there.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: One mistake: iPhone 5c is not a “low-end” phone. It is, for Apple, a mid-tier device; for everyone else, iPhone 5c is a high-end smartphone – one of the very best smartphones ever made, in fact.
As for the rest: Told ya so. Multiple times. And, in fact, told ya why a year before iPhone 5c was even unveiled.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “MacRaven” for the heads up.]
Related articles:
Fate of Apple’s iPhone 5c in question – January 29, 2014
Cook tacitly admits Apple blew it with iPhone 5c – January 28, 2014
Was iPhone 5c the cause of Apple’s woes? – January 28, 2014
MacDailyNews presents live notes from Apple’s Q114 Conference Call – January 27, 2014
Apple beats Street with record quarterly revenue, record iPhone and iPad unit sales – January 27, 2014
Why would anyone buy an iPhone 5c instead of an iPhone 5s? – September 10, 2013
How do sales of the 5C compare to whatever the stepped down model was previously? If the 5S has sold dramatically more than previous top models (based on increased overall sales as well) then it’s not so much that the 5C is disappointing, it’s that the 5S is surprisingly popular.
Surely sales are only disappointing if you’ve lost them, if you’ve upgraded them to higher value purchases you’re going to be happy.
Based on comments to a recent article posted on MDN, the 5c sold better than the 4s did the year before as the mid-tier phone.
So it’s holding its own and potentially helping improve sales of the top devices. What a disaster. It’s the sort of thing companies must dread.
I am willing to give it another few months. Then we will have the iPhone 6 at $199, the 5s at $99 and the 5c at $0 with a contract in the US. In Thailand, where I live, that will translate to the iPhone 6 at $796 the 5s at $663 and the 5c at $496 (approximately). Prices like this just might just change the sales numbers a bit – worldwide.
I upgraded to the 5S for the 64-bit, finger ID sensor, better low light pictures, and higher audio quality of my voice on phone calls. Apple still doesn’t advertise it and they pushed the 5C from the start. Apple abandoned the pattern of the prior iPhone is the cheaper iPhone by inserting a new category. Why? Nothing gained unless they could not get enough of the 5S made. I believe Apple already invested in the weak link when they helped set up the sapphire facility in Arizona.
If stock price is set on future sales then they are missing that Apple is plugging that supply shortage.
One problem is that the iPad mini didn’t reflect the colors. They intentionally or unintentionally matched the iPad Air with the 5S, so nothing was matched with the 5C. They should have released the iPad Mini in colors.
Sure. The stock price would have gone straight up if they had done that. Right? Wow!
The ‘C’ in 5C stands for cockup.
While were both going get 50+ 1 star ratings I tend to agree. I’m not sure what Apple expected for a phone that is a massive downgrade from the 5s for a relatively small price difference. People can say the 5c was meant to sell more of the 5s but the quarterly results report begs to differ
The 5C is not a “massive” downgrade from the 5S. The 5S introduced significant new features, but the 5C’s price did not reflect the difference between the two models well enough.
I bought my 13 y.o. son a 5C after his sister dropped his (my old) 4S and cracked the screen. It’s a great phone for kids, I feel it’s sturdier than the 5S I have but certainly does not feel cheap or flimsy.
Apple’s real problem is that the difference in cases and interior bits was not significant enough to have a big price gap between the two iPhone models to maintain Apple’s desired profit margins. I think we’ll see the 5C’s price adjusted significantly down when the 6 comes out and the 4S will be dropped.
I disagree. To me, metal case, 64Bit and fingerprint scanner is significant enough to have a larger than $100 price difference. Could have been between $200-300 difference and the margin on the 5C would still be high and even if its not, it would have been a nice kick in the balls to google and samsung.
I could have told Tim that! How many “5” models do we have now? About 10? Larger screen is an absolute necessity on the next model.
One thing for sure, Chromecasts, Nexus Ones and Nest thermostats are sure doing a hell of a lot more for Google than the iPhone 5C is doing for Apple. Google’s market cap is going to blow right by Apple this year if Tim Cook doesn’t get his ass in gear. They say Google threw away money buying Motorola but you’d never know it considering how well Google is performing. Apple, OTOH, well it’s easy enough to see whatever acquisitions Apple made isn’t doing a damn thing. Apple might as well discontinue the 5C if nobody is willing to buy it for the current price. Maybe Apple should just rip out the phone chips in the 5C and sell it as an updated iPod Touch. All I know is Tim Cook better deliver on his mythical, awesome product pipeline nonsense because Apple’s product engine is definitely sputtering.
iPod = dying
AppleTV = crippled
iPad = OK
MacBook = OK
MacBook Pro = OK
iMac = OK
Mac Pro = Hopeful
iPhone = OK
Retail Stores = OK
iTunes & App Store = OK
Is this product lineup really too much for Apple to handle? Seriously, Apple is most a hardware company (says Wall Street). They don’t do game consoles, they don’t do search, they don’t do enterprise cloud, they don’t do social. They hoard mountains of cash. C’mon, Apple, you can do better than what you’re doing now. Any other company would be begging to have the resources Apple has to work with. It just seems as though Apple is pissing away opportunities. Eleven more months to go in 2014. Please, show something positive.
>Apple is pissing away opportunities
This is why Apple is rich and you’re not.
Good grief MDN, how many rehash articles about the 5C do you have to link to. Stop it already.
None of this would matter if Apple was smart and stopped providing sales figures. None of their competitors do so why should they?
“iPhone 5c is a high-end smartphone – one of the very best smartphones ever made, in fact.”
Name a better smartphone please?
iPhone 5s, thus the problem.
There are lots of better smartphones as the iPhone screen is to small to be a great smartphone.
Name too phones better than the iPhone two choose between the to. 2 B or not 2 B. 2day
According to one article 27% of iPhone sales last quarter were 5Cs. That is 14M phones. I don’t think that is a bad number to start with. If it were only 5% then I would be really worried.
Now the question is can Apple increase sales by reducing the price? Drop the price of the 32GB to $99 and the 8GB to $0? Will that increase sales in the low end market and put pressure on the competitors or will it hurt sales of the highly profitable 5S instead. Remember Apple will need to sell 25% more 5Cs at the lower price to make up the difference in revenue.
I really hate all the 5c bashing. I personally own the 5s, but have bought 2 5cs for members of my research team. The day the 5c arrived I regretted not going the 5c route for myself. It just feels better to me. I don’t rely on my phone for photos, and don’t play any intensive games on it, so other than touch ID, I don’t really exploit the differences between the c and s.
Well, maybe they should have “Black” as an option. If you wanted Black then the 5S in “Space Grey” was the only option. Would have sold better.
Nobody cares about the color’s name, just the look.
Missed the point, need a 5C in Black. If you want “Black” the 5S in “Space Grey” is your only option. The name is not the point.
The premise here, that seems to be rapidly gaining traction, is that iPhone 5C is not selling well. For greater impact, some reporters are claiming that “nobody is buying 5C!”.
I can understand that ordinary readers of these claims can easily fall for them, but I am stumped at how MDN people are actually falling for this as well!
Let us look at the numbers for fiscal Q1-2014 (ended at Dec-2013) from earlier this week:
Total iPhone sales: 51 million
5c share of that: some 35% (estimated), or about 16 million
Apple doesn’t break down iPhone sales by models, so we have to go by estimates. Apparently, most analysts agree that the breakdown between three models available (5s, 5c, 4S) is more-or-less the same as it was in prior years (5-4S-4, or 4S-4-3GS, etc). The top-tier device takes nearly half of sales, middle-tier takes around 30%, oldest/cheapest model takes around 20%.
By all measures, 5c was the third best-selling mobile phone in the world during last quarter (behind iPhone 5S and a Samsung Galaxy, I’m not sure which specific one).
Practically ALL competitors would die for the type of sales disaster that is iPhone 5c…
Agreed. The biggest problem for Apple is that it underestimated the 5s’ sales volume compared to the 5c, and thus shortages of the 5s were widely reported (particularly the gold model) while the 5c was readily in stock (particularly the yellow model).
And let’s be clear: The 5c and the 5s EACH outsold the Galaxy S4.
The 5c had to exist for the 5s to do so well. Apple needed a price point and product to up-sell from. The numbers for the 5c may have been lower than expected but that does not negate its important role in getting more 5s sales.
These articles are ridiculously based in some Fantasy Land…
All Tim Cook said was that they got the “mix” wrong. Meaning they sold many more 5s’ and not as many 5c’s as they thought they would. The 5c is still selling well – almost as well as the Galaxy S4.
I’m sure their prediction was based on last years sales numbers of the previous years’ model and then increased it a percentage due to the design change. What they underestimated was the demand for the newest iPhone.
Personally, I think they should drop the iPhone name from the 5c and let the iPod touch compete in the lower end of the market by stuffing a cellular radio in it.
Apple can’t “stuff” a cellular radio into the iPod touch. The case is too thin. Besides, then Apple would have the 4S or 5C anyway, so what’s the point?
The 5s is hardly cheap, yet the colours look very low rent indeed, more suited to a Barby Doll range.
The ONLY problem with the 5C are the color choices. Just like iOS 7. If they were merely offered in BLACK and white, the outcome would have been different. But then again the a BLACK plastic iphone 5C would have eaten into 5S sales
Really? You mean like color choices hurt iPod nano sales all those years? And the 5C is offered in white.
Ridiculous.
let’s be honest here, a LOT of people would have bought a BLACK iphone 5C. it would beyond a doubt be the most popular “color”, So these customers went for the 5S instead of a pink, yellow, lime or powder blue 5C model.
Agreed. My wife liked the white one the most, but she doesn’t like white. I think they need to work on the colors and the coatings for the 5c because it otherwise feels like a very solid phone. It just looks a little off to me. I’m sure Apple can refine the line, although the lack of a black model really does indicate that they wanted people to go for the more upscale version. I wonder if this is why they killed the black plastic Macbook years ago. Those things were sexy.
Half the world’s population ( give or take ) are male. Perhaps producing 5C in a number of colours suitable for boys would have been a good start. Not even a product red option was made available.
I think the 5c was a missed opportunity for one reason no-one appears to have realised yet…..
Black face plus a colour is a horrible conflict of colour
Pastel colours plus white face would be gorgeous
” Tim Cook admitted that there was a shortage of iPhone 5Ss because they expected the iPhone 5C to sell better than it did.”
I wonder what he really said. 13.8 million of the 5c sold.
Discussion about iphones often seem to confuse pricing with pricing!
There are no real free iphones! If you have to pay anything to get it it’s not free!
The cost of new 16GB iphones:
5s in the US is $649
The 5c is $549
I had high hopes for lower pricing on the 5c! To be clear I never want Apple to make cheap items but less expensive works for me!
I know Apple is not a market share driven company but some increased sales and bigger market share is not a curse! I would have liked the 5c to be $299! The benefit would be increased sales and market share and more buyers brought into the eco system which creates a good reason to buy another iphone when it time to upgrade and get an ipad as well! Some teardown cost estmates put iphone at $180+-! As a stockholder I would be fine with $120 per phone markup experiment!
I think the time is coming when phones will be bought at their real price and not the phony 2 year contract come on!
At $299 many who now are on a 2 or 3 year cycle would buy annually and have lower monthly phone costs because device cost would no longer be a hidden factor! The top line iPhone would be more expensive than 5c but I would’t complain if Apple reduced the price!
Before the 1st ipad went on sale it seemed likely that the base price could be in the 750 To 999 range and I was pleasantly surprised by the “more agressive pricing”! So their is history to support more aggressive pricing and the 5c and its successors could be in the sweet spot replacing ipods for kids as well! Cheap no less expensive yes! Sometimes making it up on volume is not heresy!