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iPhone Was Best Selling Smartphone in Q4 2017 Amid Industry Wide Decline
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Not that surprising. There is one thing that happens every year and another that is unique this year.
Q4 of every year is the highest quarter for iPhone sales. There’s never a doubt. That’s because Q4 is iPhone release time. They’ve also guaranteed adoption by offering annual upgrades to a lot of their users on the lease program. This practice is genious on their part. Every phone financed is a phone sold. Apple uses a third part creditor to supply the funds so to them it looks like a phone sale. Financially it is genious. I forget when this program was introduced but I think it was with the 6s and this ensures continuous upgrades for users and iPhone sales for Apple.
The second unique thing this year is that for the first time in two cycles there was a new design in the iPhone X.
According to market analysts like Strategy Analytics or IDC, Apple has maybe been the number one in smartphone unit sales for about 2 to 3 quarters since they entered the market. As I recall, calendar Q2 in 2012 when Nokia was cratering and Samsung was just rising, this prior calendar Q4 2017, and maybe the Q4 2014 when the iPhone 6 models came out. Samsung has generally been the leader in unit sales on a single quarter basis since 2012.
On an annual basis Apple is obviously number 2, and have been number two behind Samsung since Nokia and HTC failed.
A unit sales comparison here is not useful without considering the market power of Apple’s customers. They have about 10% of the overall unit sales phone market, but they own the end of the market with biggest market power. That guarantees new applications will be on iOS.
Microsoft Windows Mobile/Phone used to have about 5 to 10% of the market too, but that was the low end of the market where having a thriving 3rd party ecosystem was difficult. That put them at a huge disadvantage compared to Apple’s 10% share, and the consequences were obvious.
Not that surprising. People who like iOS only have one manufacturer to go to. People who like Android have hundreds at every price point. A lot more direct competition in the Android ecosystem.
Android still has like 80% of the mobile phone market share. There’s just more competition.
... in the world? really?! In the US, it could have been perfectly reasonable to imagine. But to be the top selling phone brand in the world Impressive feat, never mind when it launchse vs competition, etc. etc. Considering the sheer range of android phones available.
And yet the most popular smartphone is the iPhone. I'm sure the poor guys at LG aren't THAT happy about you declaring them to be market leader with Android... lol.
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What are the sources for your conclusion? Thanks
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Keep on dreaming buddy. The X is worth $1000 . No matter how much you whine it will not make it worth $200 less.
Supply & Demand.
Though it is no longer much discussed on Apple forums, there really are/were a substantial number of iPhone buyers who refused to buy phones without phone jacks. I still have my 6S+, but it will be my last iPhone until Apple comes up with a decent way to accommodate my wired headphones. If iPhone 7/8 lines had headphone jacks I'd probably buy one now. As it is, no, and my need for phones still remains lower than the $1000+ price point of the X - jack or no jack.
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Whether a product is worth its price is subjective to the consumer. There is clearly a market who thought the price was worth it, and clearly a market who thought it wasn’t.
The US market thought the price was justified collecting a huge 45% of its sales. Personally I would never spend £1k on a phone. I don’t think you need to spend that these days to get the full iOS experience and own a decent iPhone. The X looks nice in theory, but spending £300 more so you can unlock it with your face or send a poo Animoji to your Nan is lost on a lot of people I think. It’s a nice option in the range and clearly appeals to some.
I don’t think the guy you quoting was whining either. I think suggesting a lower price would make it more popular is reasonable and pretty obvious. I think more people would have tried it if it hadn’t been £1k and for many the price has put people off even considering it.
Stats can be cut a whole lot of ways. From these figures we see that:
- Apple phones were not the best selling brand of phone in 2017. Samsung sold 3 phones for every 2 iPhones
- Apple phone market share in 2017 is lower than in 2016
We might look more closely and infer that releasing a new phone in Q4 (or perhaps pre-Christmas sales) boosted iPhone sales into first place in one quarter. We might also see that this did not prevent a drop in market share overall.
But apart from that the headline is spot on.
- Apple phones were not the best selling brand of phone in 2017. Samsung sold 3 phones for every 2 iPhones
- Apple phone market share in 2017 is lower than in 2016
We might look more closely and infer that releasing a new phone in Q4 (or perhaps pre-Christmas sales) boosted iPhone sales into first place in one quarter. We might also see that this did not prevent a drop in market share overall.
But apart from that the headline is spot on.
A lower price point=make it more popular...and this would be true for every product in existence right? So why should vehicle manufacturers sell premium vehicles? Everything should just be priced like an affordable Kia since they all have four doors and a steering wheel.
It would be true of every product yes, that’s obvious though.
There is a a lot more options in the car industry compared to two operating systems in the mobile sector. I’m not entirely convinced they are comparable as phones are vastly cheaper by comparison and have a much more limited choice range. I’d say there is also an obvious premium difference in the car sector, I’m a designer in the automotive sector too. There’s not an obvious premium difference between an iPhone X and an iPhone 8 though apart from the price. If I was paying an extra £300 for a stainless steel strip on a Kia, I likely wouldn’t bother. However, it’s difficult to compare cars to consumer electronics.
Yep... stats are just numbers. But it's the analysis of the stats that can tell whatever story you want.
To your first point... yes... Samsung sold 3 phones for every 2 iPhones. But if 2 of those 3 Samsung phones were $150 models... what does that really mean?
To me... it sounds like Samsung is a full-line OEM who sells a wide-range of products. And they sell a lot of low-end models.
That's neither good nor bad... it's just how it is. You can say Samsung sells more smartphones than Apple... but they do it by selling units that retail for 1/4 or 1/5 of the price of Apple units.
To your second point... market share is based on the size of the entire market at any given time. It's more of a breakdown of the entire industry... rather than a look at the performance of an individual company.
There have been times that Apple's share went down from one year to the next... but they actually sold more iPhones the next year.
And that's exactly what happened here. Apple's market share dropped by 0.2% from 2016 to 2017... but they actually sold 400,000 more phones in 2017.
The reason iPhone share went down is because the entire market grew by 19 million units... or 1.3%
Market share is a tricky beast. It's a constantly moving target based on percentages.
In a long-term view... 5 years ago the iPhone had 20% market share. But today they only have 14% market share. That's quite a drop at first glance. OMG... Apple has been losing "share" for the last 5 years!
But wait! Apple only sold 136 million units in 2012... while they sold 215 million units in 2017. That's a huge increase in "actual units" over those same 5 years.
Since the market share percentage is based on the size of the entire market at any given time... we can't ignore the following numbers.... 545 million smartphones sold in 2012 versus 1.5 billion in 2017.
The market was almost 3 times larger in 2017 than it was in 2015... so it's difficult to make any meaningful "percentage-based" comparisons from one year to any other year.
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Yep... stats are just raw numbers. But it's the analysis of the stats that can tell whatever story you want.
To your first point... yes... Samsung sold 3 phones for every 2 iPhones. But if 2 of those 3 Samsung phones were $150 models... what does that really mean?
Only correction here is that those aren't $150 phones, but $50-100 phones (which Samsung sells a ton of around the world). And it's more like 3 out of 4, not 2 out of 3. It would be impossible for Samsung ASP to be where it is today unless the majority of their sales were under $100. It's just an inconvenient truth for Samsung (math can really suck some times).
Sure. I was just quoting the numbers from the previous comment. He came up with 2 out of 3.
Not me.
HMM, Again, with out actual numbers from APPLE on how many units of each phone that were sold, I would beg to differ.
So, lets look at the selling prices of the phones on the market:
iPhone X: $999/$1149
iPhone 8+: $799/$945
iPhone 8: $699/$849
iPhone 7+: $669/$769
iPhone 7: $549/$649
iPhone 6S+ $549/$649
iPhone 6: $449/$549
iPhone SE: $349
If these phones all sold EQUALLY, the ASP would be @ $700. But who are we kidding, there is no way they are selling as many iPhone SE as they are selling the iPhone X or iPhone 8/8+ or iPhone 7/7+. So, what is major? How is that calculated when APPLE doesn't release numbers of individual phone sales. They list all the phones they sell under one "iPhone". To say that the X is the major factor, when you have 3 other models that could have easily been a MAJOR factor in why the ASP is $800.
Also, I never said that if they sold more 6s or 7. All I said is that there is no way to know that the X was the major factor in the ASP of $800. You can believe it all you want, but if it was, I would figure the ASP to be much higher.
The 2 factors to help you understand the X was a major factor.
1) Cook said it was the best selling iPhone and remains (through January) the best selling iPhone.
2) ASP was $800.
I know you hate it, but Cook just confirmed it's the best selling iPhone. What more do you want? You can argue it's only the best selling by 10% or .0001%, but it's the best selling...meaning it's a hit and they are selling a ton. They sold 77.3M iPhones.
First, I never said I hated it, so I am not sure where that came from. I am not arguing that it's the best selling either, but it could be the best selling just .0001% and he would be correct, but my point was, if they sold 1001 X's and 1000 8's the statement is true, from a certain point of view. Yes, they sold 77.3M iPhones, that was down from the previous years 4th quarter, with a iPhone 7 style was already 2 years old and removed the Headphone Jack, in which a lot of people complained. Like I said, since APPLE & TC refuse to give anyone exact numbers, I will take his "Best Selling IPhone" with a grain of salt. You however, can eat it up all you want.
I'm not eating anything up. I'm objectively looking at the figures. They increased ASP by $100 on 77M phones with a phone that was only available for 8 weeks. They guided for almost 20% y/y revenue growth in revenue in Q2, so many more will buy iPhones in Q2. The 77.3M in 13 weeks versus 78M in 14 weeks is even more amazing because they iPhone X caused people to wait for it in October and then was only available the remainder of the year. Imagine what's going to happen when they have all the phones ready in September?
It matters that last year was a 14 week quarter. On a constant weekly sales basis, they sold more like 82-83M phones. Remember, they don't just stop selling phones once the 90 window is over.
You do realize they did $61.5 B in iPhone revenue versus $54B last year, right? That matters and a big part of it is iPhone X. When Cook says it's the best selling phone, I don't try to keep arguing that it's not the best by a wide enough margin and do all this but but but stuff. It's the best selling iPhone. ASP was $800. They guided for their best Q2 ever.
If X is the best selling iPhone, it's a HUGE part of these numbers. These numbers aren't opinions. You're just grasping at straws now.
Even if the iPhone X sold exactly as many units as the iPhone 8, it would be a massive success. Apple is resetting the market on pricing for premium phones and showed that it will work. People pay for premium, confirmed.
I totally agree with you. With the absence of any sales figures per device, Apple could have sold only a handful of X’s more than other models. The iPhone 6S and 7 are best sellers in Britain according to carriers and some reports suggest 45% of all X sales were in the US. That’s guesswork though and from what Cook and Apple have released I felt it was rather a mixed bag. iPhone sales down on average despite a decent profit.
The average unit price has been heavily buffered too by having 8 iPhones currently in the range and you’re right that it’s rather low if the top tier devices were as dominant as some would like to believe. I think it just goes to show that if Apple hadn’t kept older models in the line up, they’d be looking at a hefty fall in profits right now. Welcome to the era of older devices having a healthy place in the mainstream!
Edit: To add;
The iPhone 8 became available a month prior to the iPhone X so initial rush and demand had subsided by the time the latter became available.
Also the top iPhone X model on sale is £1200 so the ASP with the combined total from the entry level X model is actually rather low. The figures when looked at more closely are not as impressive as Tim wants to hype up. They’ve had a good quarter, not an excellent one.
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Fine with me. I laid out there very objectively what the numbers say. It's absurd to think Cook is lying or some big conspiracy theory. The numbers speak for themselves.
Nobody here suggested Cook was lying and the figures indeed speak for themselves.
Oh, plenty of people suggested Cook lied. Maybe not this dude, but people literally think he's lying about it. It just gets comical after a time.
Also, please don't accuse ME of something I never did, because you didn't agree with it, no need to call me a liar or a hater.
You laid out theory which you believe in, I just stated mine. There are 5 total options of iPhones that one can buy that are above the ASP of 796. I find it hard to believe, that even with the X (selling more then any other iPhone since it was available) that the ASP is only 796 if the X was doing as GREAT as everyone believes it to be.
In the end, you may be right or you may be wrong, as well as I may be right or I may be wrong, does it really matter? The numbers are the numbers.