Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) today released analysis of the results from its research on Apple’s iPhone business for the third fiscal quarter of 2021. CIRP finds that the four new iPhone 12 models (12, 12 Pro, 12 Pro Max, and 12 mini) accounted for 63% of US iPhone sales in the quarter.
“Apple did very well as it emerged from the COVID-19 pandemic,” said Josh Lowitz, CIRP Partner and Co-Founder, in a statement. “Increased consumer spending correlated with consumers shifting to more expensive iPhone models as they retired older phones and shopped more at Apple’s own retail locations to buy those iPhones. As a consequence, we estimate that US-WARP, the analogue to Average Selling Price that Apple no longer discloses, rose in the quarter.”
“For the first time in many quarters, consumers traded in somewhat newer phones,” said Mike Levin, CIRP Partner and Co-Founder, in a statement. “We ask consumers about the age of their previous phone, and in the quarter, we saw the share of phones that were three years old or greater decrease. In the quarter, it looks like iPhone buyers traded in fewer older phones and opted for more expensive iPhone models as they upgraded.”
The four iPhone 12 models together had 63% of total US sales, including iPhone 12, 12 Pro, 12 Pro Max, and 12 mini. One year ago, the three iPhone 11 models, including iPhone 11, 11 Pro, and 11 Pro Max, had 65% of total US sales.
iPhone Purchase by Model by Quarter
Among all individual models, CIRP finds that the new iPhone 12 Pro Max and year-old iPhone 11 had the largest share of any single model, each at 23%. iPhone 12 mini and iPhone XR had the smallest share, each at 5%.
Read more in the full report here.
MacDailyNews Take: Enjoy the iPhone mini 13 (which was already in the pipeline before iPhone 12 mini debuted), because that anemic-selling 5.4-inch model is going the way of the dodo in 2022.
Folks, MDN’s fascination with the “Clown Phone,” is a little over-the-top at times. If the iPhone 12 Pro Max represents 23%, 77% of us selected against it when purchasing our iPhones! Bigger is not always better (especially when it comes to technology), and it is naive to assume the only reason to select a smaller iPhone is cost. Not all of us use the same mix of features. My wife uses a wide diversity of apps on her Mini, but her predominate use of it is as a telephone – imagine that – and for that predominate purpose the “Clown Phone” is the least desirable iPhone in Apple’s lineup!
Five percent seems like a pretty decent share to me. If I were in charge, I’d keep it around a bit longer. We’d also have Touch ID under the screen and a much larger Apple TV Plus content library.
I don’t think the “mini” is going away. 5% of iPhone sales is more than total sales for most other brands running Android. AND I think it’s design will eventually become iPhone SE (with latest specs) after the model(s) based on iPhone 7/8.