Apple's iPhone 16 Was the Best Selling Smartphone in Q1 2025

[Lioness~]

I really hope Apple comes out with a smaler phone, such as flip-phone or similar, soon.
Not that my 13 mini isn't good - it's still a great phone, and will be a few more years ♥️
But sooner or later I'll need a new one, and I really don't want one of those big phones.
I rather go buy me a small Samsung Flip before that.
But I just enjoy the simplicity of of how Apple-stuff works together. It's a shame though that they don't give us mini-fans a new small phone. Really, really bad, dumb dumb Apple 😡

 

[MaaK]

Did it really outsell the Pro? Okay it outsold the 6.3“ Pro. But if you take Pro and Pro Max and compare it to the 16 and 16 Plus, the Pros outsold the normal 16s.
Nevertheless, happy for the 16e. I bought one, because I personally don’t need all the bells and whistles and like the clean design more than the normal 16's design.

Hope this will be a new yearly iPhone version that comes in a mini format in the future.

 

[crisneat]

Consumers now expect top-tier performance in base models. This may limit how much Apple can “wow” users in the next product cycle.

Apple now has to find genuinely new, useful features that are exciting enough to drive upgrades. These features must feel meaningful, not just iterative. Without that, sales growth could slow and customer excitement might fade, especially among high end users

 

[svish]

Apple is consistently leading. iPhones are very good phones. Looks like more customers are buying the Pro models.

 

[Hellokittystampmyfacein]

So what

 

[Hellokittystampmyfacein]

I haven’t seen any iOS reliability issues. Can you give an example of what you mean?

literally every time I pull mine out and turn it on it works apps don’t crash It gets the job done and it keeps me happy, rarely have hardware issues I have insurance for such a scenario

 

[MacFarmer]

Do you see Apple! iPhone with colors sells!!

 

[Stuwil]

I remember when Apple was mocked after the '07 Macworld keynote, especially by Microsoft and Nokia. Essentially, "what does Apple know about making phones; it'll fail spectacularly". Whoops.

Ok that was 2007 it’s now 2025
Things move on.
Some other companies also produce really good devices as well

 

[Stuwil]

Apple is consistently leading. iPhones are very good phones. Looks like more customers are buying the Pro models.

Or is it more that apple’s customers upgrade earlier than other devices

 

[Stuwil]

Consumers now expect top-tier performance in base models. This may limit how much Apple can “wow” users in the next product cycle.

Apple now has to find genuinely new, useful features that are exciting enough to drive upgrades. These features must feel meaningful, not just iterative. Without that, sales growth could slow and customer excitement might fade, especially among high end users

Well that’s not particularly true in regards to the current iPhone 16 lineup as they all have the same amount of ram unlike previous the generation of iPhones

 

[Fuzzball84]

This chart shows why the Plus model is being discontinued. The difference in position between it and the other 3 models is quite stark.

And it’s odd as the plus model is actually a really amazing phone when you consider the price different between it and the pro max

I guess if it had higher refresh rate it would have been a top seller. Maybe that’s why Apple did that; ad it would eat into sales of the Pro Max.

I’m actually thinking of getting it before the Plus models are discontinued.

 

[kiranmk2]

it's funny that the Pro models consistently outsell the “regular” models.

IMO the iPhone 16 is a "worst of both worlds" model. Not fancy enough to justify the price jump over the 16E, and not cheap enough to dissuade many buyers from getting the Pro.

The iPhone 16e launched later in the quarter, so we will see how it's doing next quarter. I suspect it will be a massive seller (especially as most people who want an iPhone 16/Plus/Pro/Pro max will have already bought them

I feel like there are enough reasons to justify the 16 price jump over the 16e. Ultrawide camera, Dynamic Island, MagSafe, camera control (even though no one uses that lol), an arguably better modem, feature set, and many more tiny but useful features...

There are reasons to justify a price jump over the 16e, but not (in my opinion) a $200 difference. The only one that really puzzles me is the lack of Magsafe as Apple has cut off iPhone 16e owners from buying all their overpriced Magsafe accessories...

I think this year, with the massive push on Apple Intelligence and offering this on both Pro and non-Pro models, there was less obvious reasons to go for a Pro model, especially when you factor in the cost of living increases around the world. For me, the only benefits of the Pro over the non-Pro are now an extra GPU core, faster USB port, the telephoto camera and 1-120 Hz Promotion screen. Of these, the only feature I feel I would benefit from is the telephoto camera, but that isn't enough to make me spend the additional cash, so I go for the non-Pro models.

 

[Fuzzball84]

The Pro phones aren’t really Pro phones. What type of Professional requires a Pro phone? A photographer, they would use a dedicated camera with superior optics and sensor. A professional lawyer, doctor, scientists? They would be doing their computer based work on a laptop (likely windows based) at work and have a hospital issued phone which in many places is not an iPhone in any case.

The Pro designation is a marketing gimmick. The Pro phone is the iPhone they would have released. Every other model below it is just the iPhone minus something. And those iPhones minus something, even the 16e are more than enough for most people’s needs.

In reality the Pro designation is a humiliation of the consumer. The marketing department of Apple appealing to the consumers sense of prestige, status and worth. It’s just a mechanism to extract money from you when the other iPhones would make more sense.

Marketing is a very very powerful tool in Apples tool kit for extracting money from the customer.

They make amazing phones, which are mostly rock solid and super reliable. But their marketing is among the most slick, refined and successful of any major tech company.

 

[Jay Tee]

Just general bugs, all over the place, all the time.

Now that you mentioned it, I’m experiencing a bug with my M1 iMac and M3 MBA that prevents them from connecting to my iPhone 11’s hotspot connection. To resolve this issue, I have to open the Settings app and navigate to the HotSpot menu. It’s a minor bug that I suppose should be classified as a reliability issue.

Additionally, I’m encountering minor scanning issues with Image Capture. I suspect this could be a firmware problem with my FujiFilm printer. Could anyone recommend a reliable and robust multifunction duplex printer that works seamlessly with Apple devices?

Same here. Zero issues. And my iPhone 16PM gets a ton of use every day.

It gets the job done and it keeps me happy, rarely have hardware issues

Overall though, yeah, reliability is solid without being perfectly free of bugs.

 

[DelayedGratificationGene]

Yup Apple is doomed!

 

[Fuzzball84]

The iPhone 16e launched later in the quarter, so we will see how it's doing next quarter. I suspect it will be a massive seller (especially as most people who want an iPhone 16/Plus/Pro/Pro max will have already bought them


There are reasons to justify a price jump over the 16e, but not (in my opinion) a $200 difference. The only one that really puzzles me is the lack of Magsafe as Apple has cut off iPhone 16e owners from buying all their overpriced Magsafe accessories...

I think this year, with the massive push on Apple Intelligence and offering this on both Pro and non-Pro models, there was less obvious reasons to go for a Pro model, especially when you factor in the cost of living increases around the world. For me, the only benefits of the Pro over the non-Pro are now an extra GPU core, faster USB port, the telephoto camera and 1-120 Hz Promotion screen. Of these, the only feature I feel I would benefit from is the telephoto camera, but that isn't enough to make me spend the additional cash, so I go for the non-Pro models.

Although ironically despite the massive push on Apple Intelligence. I suspect the next few iterations will need even more onboard RAM to cope with running LLMs locally. I’d not be surprised if in 2 years time 12 or 16 GB is standard across all iPhone models.

 

[bluecoast]

I remember when Apple was mocked after the '07 Macworld keynote, especially by Microsoft and Nokia. Essentially, "what does Apple know about making phones; it'll fail spectacularly". Whoops.

Yeah it's hard to overstate what a an overpriced boutique novelty the rest of the tech industry saw the iPhone as.

A word of caution though - with the advent of GenAI, Apple now finds itself in Nokia and RIM's (Blackberry) position - an absolute titan that like these companies, could bleed market share over the next 5 years if it doesn't sort out it's AI capabilities - and fast.

I've said this a few times here and various people have sneered at me.

But like you've pointed out, Nokia were huge in 07 - they completely dominated the consumer handset space with a huge huge market share (with BB winning the corporate world).

But by 2012, both were on their knees.

Dramatic changes can happen fast in the world of tech

 

[Fuzzball84]

Yeah it's hard to overstate what a an overpriced boutique novelty the rest of the tech industry saw the iPhone as.

A word of caution though - with the advent of GenAI, Apple now finds itself in Nokia and RIM's (Blackberry) position - an absolute titan that like these companies, could bleed market share over the next 5 years if it doesn't sort out it's AI capabilities - and fast.

I've said this a few times here and various people have sneered at me.

But like you've pointed out, Nokia were huge in 07 - they completely dominated the consumer handset space with a huge huge market share (with BB winning the corporate world).

But by 2012, both were on their knees.

Dramatic changes can happen fast in the world of tech

But the issue with AI is that it could equally destroy the other companies that have dived in head first in the rush to roll AI features out.

It just takes one incident of people’s emails, messages and photos being intruded upon by AI, sent out to all contacts in their contacts list and boom. You have had a privacy violation that would tank that companies stock value and no one would ever touch their phones again.

Therefore Apples privacy focus and caution and slow movement in this area could actually turn out to be the feature that everyone wants.

 

[bluecoast]

The Pro phones aren’t really Pro phones. What type of Professional requires a Pro phone? A photographer, they would use a dedicated camera with superior optics and sensor. A professional lawyer, doctor, scientists? They would be doing their computer based work on a laptop (likely windows based) at work and have a hospital issued phone which in many places is not an iPhone in any case.

The Pro designation is a marketing gimmick. The Pro phone is the iPhone they would have released. Every other model below it is just the iPhone minus something. And those iPhones minus something, even the 16e are more than enough for most people’s needs.

In reality the Pro designation is a humiliation of the consumer. The marketing department of Apple appealing to the consumers sense of prestige, status and worth. It’s just a mechanism to extract money from you when the other iPhones would make more sense.

Marketing is a very very powerful tool in Apples tool kit for extracting money from the customer.

They make amazing phones, which are mostly rock solid and super reliable. But their marketing is among the most slick, refined and successful of any major tech company.

Totally. I really hope that they move to the ultra branding this year as as you say, pro should genuinely mean pro.

I guess though that Apple would argue that pro max phones have been used by Hollywood directors to make actual real films - so they are 'pro'.

But I agree with you - the Mac Pro, is unashamedly pro. As is logic pro, as you can find it in all sorts of recording studios.

 

[bluecoast]

But the issue with AI is that it could equally destroy the other companies that have dived in head first in the rush to roll AI features out.

It just takes one incident of people’s emails, messages and photos being intruded upon by AI, sent out to all contacts in their contacts list and boom. You have had a privacy violation that would tank that companies stock value and no one would ever touch their phones again.

Therefore Apples privacy focus and caution and slow movement in this area could actually turn out to be the feature that everyone wants.

True, it could. But you know, everyday there's hacks into various companies and customer data is stolen - yet people still use e-commerce.

And this is a huge wave with ridiculous amount of investment going into AI and with so much money on the line, I think that it's pretty much unstoppable.

And to your point about Apple taking a 'wait and see' approach. Several tech commentators far smarter than me (MKBHD etc.) have stated that this won't work this time, as GenAI is inherently unpredictable and the only way to develop it is to launch it now and to iterate, so waiting for it to become 'safe' - well, you could be waiting a long time.

It would be like someone waiting until the iPhone is bug free before purchasing one. Good luck with that.

 

[Saturn007]

It'd be good to learn about Counterpoint Research's methodology -- and its strengths and weaknesses.

How does it determine the sales? Retailers? Surveys? Suppliers?

How representative are those channels or whatever sources it relies on?

What are the sampling biases?

We know that Apple does NOT reveal unit sales... so, how does Counterpoint *estimate* them?

How accurate are its claims of sales? Estimates ≠ actual sales.

How well does it capture the different regions of the world it reports on? What effect does that have its rankings?

China, India, and other countries are each a huge market. Counterpoint doesn't report data by country -- likely because its samples are too sample or not representative. That could well mean its regional and overall rankings are suspect.

How do its claims compare to actual sales -- e.g., as divined from corporate reports?

The summary -- that is, the rankings are accessible, but the actual report is hidden behind a wall -- and Counterpoint reveals nothing publicly about its methodology.

Its web page is a disaster, with the drop downs repeatedly hiding the summary as you move around the page. If it can't even get a basic web page designed right, how much confidence should we have in its ability to estimate sales and do so *globally*? (Yes, I know that analyzing sales is likely done by others in the company, but the lack of attention to the details of web design -- the front face of the company -- could well indicate a lack of attention to details in general.)

Before we start speculating on why Apple is doing so well contrary to much musing here on MR, or why certain models are up or down, or what's happening with the smartphone market in general, we should figure out whether the findings -- and rankings -- are credible and even worth discussing!

Note something else -- from Data Analysis 101 -- differences in rankings can mask small differences in performance -- or, in this case, sales.

 

[Fuzzball84]

True, it could. But you know, everyday there's hacks into various companies and customer data is stolen - yet people still use e-commerce.

And this is a huge wave with ridiculous amount of investment going into AI and with so much money on the line, I think that it's pretty much unstoppable.

And to your point about Apple taking a 'wait and see' approach. Several tech commentators far smarter than me (MKBHD etc.) have stated that this won't work this time, as GenAI is inherently unpredictable and the only way to develop it is to launch it now and to iterate, so waiting for it to become 'safe' - well, you could be waiting a long time.

It would be like someone waiting until the iPhone is bug free before purchasing one. Good luck with that.

The aspect about AI is that people are using it for very personal activities. Interacting with it as if it’s a friend. Divulging information with it that they would never divulge to other companies under normal circumstances

This is the aspect that could prove decimating should there be issues.

I’m absolutely for AI and its use in certain aspects of tech. But a general application of it to everything and anything is not the way.

Big corporations deem it a risk and have disabled and banned its use.

I’ve heard numerous reports that the big leaders in tech actually use pen and paper more than others, don’t allow their children to use particular services that their own companies provide.

I know a few people working in the tech industry who promote various technologies professionally, but who shun it personally.

 

[Fuzzball84]

Totally. I really hope that they move to the ultra branding this year as as you say, pro should genuinely mean pro.

I guess though that Apple would argue that pro max phones have been used by Hollywood directors to make actual real films - so they are 'pro'.

But I agree with you - the Mac Pro, is unashamedly pro. As is logic pro, as you can find it in all sorts of recording studios.

Yeah, that’s true but even professional grade equipment in many industries is not designated Pro.

Those companies mostly treat those “professionals” with a bit more respect. Where a name without “Pro” “ultra” etc is used and the product and its specs sell itself.

I have never liked the Pro designation on Mac and Surface products. At most these devices are “Prosumer” class. What you’d call the highest end of consumer class products.

But they are not professional as in the case of the old days of IBM thinkpads and I think Panasonic toughbooks etc

Those products were genuine “professional” grade. Being used by US government, including aboard the ISS.

 

[Jason2000]

yup, a clear indication that Apple is lagging, not innovativing, overpriced and doomed ...

Also shows the average user really does not care about AI like the tech bros want you to believe they do.

 

[lkrupp]

it's funny that the Pro models consistently outsell the “regular” models.

IMO the iPhone 16 is a "worst of both worlds" model. Not fancy enough to justify the price jump over the 16E, and not cheap enough to dissuade many buyers from getting the Pro.

The rest of the world apparently disagrees with you.