iPhone Ownership Reaches All-Time High in United States

[SaguaroJoeT]

I am genuinely surprised by this. I am all Apple and have been for 8-9 years but I live in Tucson, AZ, a city and surrounding county of a million, small as cities go. Arizona is one of the poorer states. My observations are that the iPhone is in second place to phones made by Samsung here. We do have an Apple Store and like all Apple Stores I've ever visited it never sleeps but I guess income counts when it comes to phones. Even the great "use other people's money" financing plan doesn't seem to help. I keep waiting for Samsung to throw in the towel on phones but I guess they've discovered the secret formula of making up for no profits through volume.

 

[krizalidzero]

I find the type of iPhone people have way more interesting than how many people have an iPhone.

The 6 and 6S are so good people haven't felt the need to upgrade, plus they are cheaper and people will buy that instead of the 7, the headphone jack also probably plays a role.

The SE hasn't sold as much as I thought, but I think that's mostly because people who own the 5S are quite satisfied and don't se a reason to upgrade.

Also, Apple has underestimated the aesthetic factor. The 7 looks too much like the 6 and the SE looks exactly like the 5/5S (minor differences won't do it).

Well, that's my take on it anyways.

 

[Kabeyun]

Looking at the chart, compared to Android, Android has increased MORE than iOS in the past 3 years. iOS is more or less stagnant.

I'm puzzled. Are you looking at the same chart we are? The graph shows that in the last 3 years each OS has grown one percent; Android has gone from 53% to 54% and iOS has gone from 42% to 43% (which is impressive given that the Android number includes every phone brand that has Android installed while the iOS number includes only iPhones). Why call out only iOS?

On the other hand, if you look back 5 years Android has grown 1% while iOS has grown 7%, with the Microsoft and BB holdouts switching to iPhones. Which is stagnant?

 

[Mactendo]

It actually means there are more people in the US willing to spend huge amounts of money on a smartphone than any other country in the world.

Looking at the chart, compared to Android, Android has increased MORE than iOS in the past 3 years. iOS is more or less stagnant.

Not sure if it's stagnant, but at this point in time it's freaking ugly and a mess. Although Android may be even worse.

 

[Radon87000]

Android dropped in the US.

Winning on the home ground losing everywhere else is the summary

 

[I7guy]

Winning on the home ground losing everywhere else is the summary

Doesn't seem like Apple is losing anywhere. Stock price is up, earnings are up, they are getting 90%+ of the profits in the smartphone industry. But there is nothing wrong with a narrow point of view.

 

[Radon87000]

Doesn't seem like Apple is losing anywhere. Stock price is up, earnings are up, they are getting 90%+ of the profits in the smartphone industry. But there is nothing wrong with a narrow point of view.

The thread is on market share. Keep it on topic

 

[ChrisChaval]

****

My iPhone SE gets no love at all. LOL!

SE footprint of 3%, worse than all of them -- including vintage obsolete 3G/4/4s combo. There is no chance that the "number-cruncher" will upgrade the SE -- it speaks loudly of EOL.

That's what I've been thinking too when looking at the chart ..

Finally some Iphone SE numbers, surprisingly low, would have expected a far bigger market share by now in relation to the other iphone models ..

Let's see how this evolves

 

[Justin Iacobellis]

I remember walking around the city with my iPhone 4 back in the day, as there was a rarity to owning one & it used to be a big deal. Literally almost everyone I know owns an iPhone in some shape or form today.

I remember this. It could likely be attributed to the exclusivity of the iPhone at the time, it could only be purchased for use on AT&T. Once Verizon got the iPhone, then Sprint and finally T-Mobile, it was like a domino effect.

 

[ChrisChaval]

It had only been out for 7 months when that 3 percent count started and it isn't a flashship model. The 4S, 4 and 3GS all sold in huge numbers and were sold for 3 years each so there will of course still be large numbers of users when combined.

The iphone SE is now more than one year old being released on march 2016

I would have expected a far quicker adoption rate by all those 5s, 5, 4s, 4 and 3GS users still out there looking for a smaller device to replace their aging phones

Some thought that those people were holding on to their old devices because of the lack of a smaller phone such as the SE in Apple's portfolio before march 2016

Interesting

 

[oldmacs]

The iphone SE is now more than one year old being released on march 2016

I would have expected a far quicker adoption rate by all those 5s, 5, 4s, 4 and 3GS users still out there looking for a smaller device to replace their aging phones

Some thought that those people were holding on to their old devices because of the lack of a smaller phone such as the SE in Apple's portfolio before march 2016

Interesting

The data that said 3 percent covers From September to December 2016, so from when it was for sale for 6 months.

Sales for the SE have been greater than apple and others expected, it has done well.

 

[Brien]

Really curious on numbers for those under 13. I see more and more Kindergarten-age children rocking iPhones each year (and rarely, Apple Watches!).

 

[ChrisChaval]

The data that said 3 percent covers From September to December 2016, so from when it was for sale for 6 months.

True

 

[EliasM]

In December '13 they hit 42 %. This has gone up to 43 % and has staid there. Doesn't that look like the number has stabilised or perhaps reached a ceiling rather than "hit all-time high"?

 

[ryanwarsaw]

Yes, and Apple was ahead of Microsoft in the eighties too, but then Scully became greedy and Apple lost market share and MS passed Apple in profits. It took Jobs over ten years to become more profitable than Microsoft.

Apple would be in a better position if they were the dominant OS on smart phones, just like Microsoft is on the desktop. A position they have held for 25 years while making money on Office, cloud service, Xbox etc. 2016 was the first year Apple saw a decline in profits for 15 years. In the long run their strategy is hurting them, Android now has a 90% market share world wide and the problem is not Apple's products. People just can't afford them.

We shall see in 15 years if their strategy is hurting them. In the mean time it seems they are doing quite fine. Their MO isn't to sell cheap phones to everybody, that just isn't what Apple does.

 

[Sevendaymelee]

"Think Differently"

Fixed. Those PR guys at Apple need some basic grammar lessons.
[doublepost=1492768942][/doublepost]

I like seeing charts like these. I find the data quite interesting. One observational note: I can't believe active iPhone 3g/4/4s users outnumber iPhone SE users.

The SE is Apple's best kept secret.

 

[Carnegie]

This is a bit misleading guys.

The majority of these iphones in the USA are 3+ years old.

That's not a graph apple is proud of.

Why they should push another iOS update to slow our phones down more to force us iPhone 4, 5, & 6 users to upgrade.

ComScore's numbers (i.e. those represented in the OP) show something quite different. According to them, as of the third quarter of last year only about one quarter of iPhones users (13+) in the U.S. were using iPhones that were more than about 2 years and 3 months old. And that's based on when the generations of iPhones were first available, not on how long ago particular iPhones had been bought.

The iPhone 6 models were released in September of 2014. This report offers numbers for the average of October through December 2016 (so, not numbers as of the end of December, more like numbers as of the end of November). By then three quarters of iPhone users in the U.S. were using an iPhone 6 model or a newer one.
[doublepost=1492770227][/doublepost]

I definitely don't see this as a positive. There are more iPhone 5 (original, S and SE) owners than there are iPhone 7 owners. Also it shows that since the design has not changed significantly since the 6 a lot of those 6 / 6S owners did not care to upgrade to the 7. I think that if they do not make a drastic change to the form factor (reduce bezel, increase screen, and reduce the overall size of the device) it will hurt Apple's share in the smartphone market.

According to the numbers comScore is offering, more people in the U.S. were using iPhone 7 models within a few months of its launch (12.6 million) than were using iPhone 6 models within a few months of its launch (11.6 million). And that's even though the total number of iPhone users wasn't growing as fast, meaning the difference in the number of upgraders was likely even larger than that.

And the total number of iPhone 6 generation (iPhone 6 and iPhone 6S models) users had already shrunk by 4.6 million within a couple months or so of the availability of iPhone 7 models (the numbers presented aren't from the end of December, they're the average for October through December). That's even though that generation (i.e. iPhone 6Ss) was still being sold. Obviously a lot of upgraders were coming from the iPhone 4 and 5 generations, but a lot were also coming from the iPhone 6 generation - at least in the United States. That was probably helped by the generous trade in offers that the major U.S. carries were offering.
[doublepost=1492771154][/doublepost]

The iPhone 6/6S are 2.5-3.5 years old, don't exaggerate. Now that carriers are no longer offering subsidies, and phones are only getting incrementally better every year, 3-4 years (or until the phone dies) is becoming standard for a lot of people. And a lot of people opted for a cheaper 6s (or keep their 6/6s) over a 7 to keep the headphone jack. So it's not surprising they're still the most popular even though they're old models now.

The oldest iPhone 6 model is only about 2.5 years old, not 3.5 years old.

And the iPhone 6 generation (i.e. iPhone 6 models and iPhone 6S models) is the most popular because it's the one that's been available of the last two and a half years. It would of course represent the largest number of current iPhone users. But even though it is still being sold (i.e. iPhone 6Ss are still being sold), the number of iPhone 6 generation users (in the U.S.) is shrinking. It was shrinking already within the first few months of the iPhone 7 models being available. So more people were stopping using that generation iPhone (e.g. because they upgraded to an iPhone 7 model or stopped using iPhones altogether) than were still buying them.

The number of iPhone 7 model users was actually pretty strong considering these numbers come from only a few months after iPhone 7 models became available - not even 3 months actually, as the numbers are an average from October through December, not as of the end of December. I think some people are misinterpreting the numbers as, if anything, they suggest that Apple continues to see fairly strong upgrade demand - even from customers already using fairly new models. The upgrade cycle hasn't elongated (at least in the U.S.) to the extent many had expected.
[doublepost=1492771660][/doublepost]

Bizarre headline to data that suggests new iPhone models are slow to be adopted. By the graph, it appears it takes nearly 2 years for a particular model's sales to reach their maximum, at which point the phone is well outdated.

I guess maybe from a profit perspective this could be good? But for getting your technology into the wild, it's a setback.

The graph isn't showing sales, it's showing active users. So, of course, a particular model's (or a particular generation's) peak isn't going to come soon after it is released. Sales slow down but the number in the wild being used continues to increase. So long as it's the newest model (or generation) being sold, its installed base should be increasing.

 

[I7guy]

The thread is on market share. Keep it on topic

Please only talk about the United States to keep this thread on topic.

 

[travelsheep]

If I would buy tomorrow, I would buy an iPhone 6S. Because headphone jack.

 

[M.PaulCezanne]

Think Apps with Ads!

 

[62tele]

Yes, and Apple was ahead of Microsoft in the eighties too, but then Scully became greedy and Apple lost market share and MS passed Apple in profits. It took Jobs over ten years to become more profitable than Microsoft.

Apple would be in a better position if they were the dominant OS on smart phones, just like Microsoft is on the desktop. A position they have held for 25 years while making money on Office, cloud service, Xbox etc. 2016 was the first year Apple saw a decline in profits for 15 years. In the long run their strategy is hurting them, Android now has a 90% market share world wide and the problem is not Apple's products. People just can't afford them.

Terrible comparison. Apple lead briefly in PCs with the Apple II but didn't follow up with a viable successor for 7 years allowing clones running Microsoft to overtake them. Apple has continued to produce worthy followups year after year with the iPhone. Secondly, the PC market was dominated by enterprise customers. That's not true for smartphones and mobile devices. The mobile market is a consumer dominated and folks bring their mobile devices to work with them. It doesn't matter if "Android" has 90% worldwide marketshare. It's not profitable for the device manufacturers.

What this says is that the premium smartphone market is dominated by Apple because the iPhone is iconic. The iPhone is almost synonymous with "smartphone". It's iPhone vs Android and not iPhone versus HTC, LG, Motorola. I doubt that more than minuscule number of consumers could even tell you the trade name of the flagship HTC, LG, or Motorola phone. The only exception is the Samsung Galaxy but even that is watered down because they are still selling many older models of the Galaxy. Simply put, you either have an iPhone or some anonymous Android device.

 

[Chair-Sama]

iOS adoption among smartphone users aged 13 and older is an estimated 43 percent

The reason the market share is high in US is because iPhone is relative cheap for Americans, the dollar is strong and people in US have higher salaries than most other countries.

I wonder how large Apple's market share would be if they had sold the iPhone at production costs. It would have been extremely hard for Samsung and others to enter the market 8 years ago. Apple would be able to push cost lower because of the scale.

Apple could have owned the smart phone market, they could have been as big as Microsoft when it comes to PC. For underdeveloped countries they could sell old models really cheap.

Apple could then have made money from the Apple Store, Apple Music and other Apple products/services in the ecosystem. With a larger market share, Android development would be as attractive as OS/2 or CP/M development.

.....dude apple one of the largest single corporations on the planet. and has usually been consecutively in the top 10, up their with 4-6 of the worlds largest banks.

i mean really stop and think about that for a minute. A Tech company has a Total value that can rival some of the largest banks in the world, how much more money did you want apple to make?

 

[Chair-Sama]

It's so interesting to see this evolution within the last 5 - 10 years. People used to be so price sensitive to these 500$+ smartphones back then, however paying that much today is the norm across many markets. Fascinating.

actually prices have always usually been this high, what you saw before, where prices were under 500$ was usually the price of the device with a carrier subsidized price. keep in mind, back then you *usually* HAD to get an iPhone with some type of carrier plan. hell the original iPhone was only sold at Apple and AT&T. you couldn't go to walmart or best buy, or any of the dozens of carriers that now sell them and see the different prices.

back then sure you only paid 199$ or 299$, Upfront, but most people never realized the little fees that were tacked on with it(IE Verizons "line access Fee", or the separate lines you needed to get to add the smartphones on to) so you paid 299$ and paid the other $300+ in fees over the 2 year contract, hence the term "subsidized" pricing.
Carriers got you in the door with the low price, but still made their money back with the contact because you HAD to basically keep paying for 2 years or you'd have some outrageous cancellation fee, which they still profited from.





also ironic. you say 10 years...the iPhone isn't even 10 years old. so what smartphones were you talking about from 10 years ago? The blackberries? the original Droid? the sidekicks? come on now.
the original iPhone? came out at 599$ and dropped to 399$ with a AT&T 2 year contact.
the only truly "cheap" iPhone during the period you are describing was the iPhone 3g/3gs which while debuted with the 19/299/399 price points, again, were always with 2 year AT&T contracts.

even the favored iPhone 4 and 4s, which everybody glorifies, came out at prices over 500$. and these were still 6-7 years ago.


[doublepost=1492807935][/doublepost]

Understand completely your take, Mac 128 (LOL!)

But you forget the time of release:
1. SE, March 2016
2. 7s and 7s+, September 2016
3. Survey, December 2016

The only stat that matters to the "bean-counter" is 2.5M SEs among US users. 1:30 approximately (if believed).

I would love to see a SE refreshed because it is perfect for both, my wife and me: I have no stomach for either $1,000+ phones or phones that cannot be used with a single hand. And I pay for my phones cash-and-carry. Not prone to any of the pay-as-you-go mumbo-jumbo.

lol there has never been a single iPhone in history to date that has a base price over 1,000.
iPhones have been consistently priced(if you can see past the Subsidized price fog that the carrier put out there)
seriously do some research.
original iPhone? to pay cash-in-hand was 599$,
now the iPhone 3g//3gs were cheaper but again with a AT&T contract and 2 year plan.
iPhone 4? 599-799$ for retail price.
iPhone 4s? 599-849 retail price(just over 900$ with tax, and more if you wanted a case/extra charger ETC)
iPhone 5? 599-849
iPhone 5s? 599-849
this only went up more with the 6 model year because of the 6 Plus model, with the plus models being ~100$ more for each same gigabyte tier. and apple even tried to play this smart (instead of having 2 flagships like samsung, IE galaxy S series and the Galaxy Note series) they just made the same phone, in two sizes, and appropriately charged the larger phone a little bit more.
in fact, the prices have literally been perfectly consistent between the iPhone 4(came out in 2010) until the iPhone SE came out as the lower price point.

if anything apple is Breaking its rigid price points by releasing a smaller device at a smaller price. and they are actually Keeping support for it(unlike the hundreds of galaxy letter jumble knock-offs that are basically EOL on a 3 year old non-updated OS at the time of purchase). they actually made a Phone that was, Specs and performance wise, Almost identical to their just released flagship, in the shape and size people wanted back, AND they charged nearly 200$ less for it.
it was literally everything people wanted and people still found ways to complain, but thats irrelevant in this convo.

and before you call mumbo-jumbo on my "facts" here are some sources.

 

[dilbert99]

There is a home field advantage for Apple. But by reaching the younger people it does instill some brand loyalty and halo for later products.

I used to see that halo. But now its gone. I remember when I used to hate Micro$oft, not so much no a days. $Apple$ seems to have that honour now.
[doublepost=1492820066][/doublepost]What happened to ios10 being installed on 90+% of phones...dont you just love how companies use statistics.

 

[LordVic]

The iphone SE is now more than one year old being released on march 2016

I would have expected a far quicker adoption rate by all those 5s, 5, 4s, 4 and 3GS users still out there looking for a smaller device to replace their aging phones

Some thought that those people were holding on to their old devices because of the lack of a smaller phone such as the SE in Apple's portfolio before march 2016

Interesting

Think it's partly price. 399 is still a lot for a device that uses mostly parts from an old device. Has some great upgrades inside, but ultimately it's still the 5s. As someone who used a 5s for a while. Even last year, I wouldn't be compelled to pay that, especially not $599 Canadian that it was sold at,

I think there's some lag to the market but apples increase in prices over the last year , especial,y internationally on virtually all their products, might come back to bite them on the ass if they can't offer compelling reasons for that.... especially when they keep claiming massive profits, and 200 million dollar stock payments to cook.