Apple
announced this morning that it had sold more than 9 million iPhone 5s and 5c devices this past weekend. It did not indicate how many of the 9 million were 5c devices vs. 5s devices. Most of the demand globally is likely to have been for the 5s. That’s what our
survey showed (see below).
The market became very nervous after the 5c went on sale for pre-orders a week ago and Apple didn’t issue a press release last Monday. Many institutional investors sold Apple shares. Then the very postive 5s reviews came out stoking consumer demand.
Here’s what Apple said in its
release this morning:
Apple today announced it has sold a record-breaking nine million new iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c models, just three days after the launch of the new iPhones on September 20. In addition, more than 200 million iOS devices are now running the completely redesigned iOS 7, making it the fastest software upgrade in history.
Essentially the 5s sold out of its initial supply.
Source: , n=1,508 US adults (Sept 16 – 19 2013) Last year Apple said it had sold 5 million iPhones during its first weekend. That was a record at the time. This nearly doubles it. The company also announced this morning that since iOS7 became available late last week, 200 million devices around the world have been upgraded.
I was concerned that I would dislike or be ambivalent about the new OS. However I actually like it quite a bit.
The iPhone 5s sellout will only fuel further demand for the device. Supplies of the 5c remain available. But the public seems to recognize the 5c as “last year’s model” with a new coat of paint. While that’s not entirely true (there are some upgrades) demand for the 5c has been much less than the 5s as our survey last week predicted.
Update: Localytics now
answers the 5s vs. 5c sales question, saying that the 5s outsold the other device by a factor of more than 3X in the US and an even larger margin outside the US: