How many people do you know who are going to buy the latest iPhone this year or next? I can tell you that among my acquaintances, that number is vastly lower than it was if I asked the same question in February. And that's assuming that everything with the virus goes as well as possible, which it isn't.
Some estimates put iPhone X sales this quarter at 30m. And don't forget that people are generally poor at estimating probabilities like this, consider the birthday problem as an example. It takes a group of ~1,200 people for a one in a million collision to be more likely than not to occur. It's very unlikely for it to happen to you, but it's very likely to happen to somebody.
I feel like the number of people who both cannot afford food and will buy the latest iPhone is vanishingly small. I am sure such people exist, and that is... strange, but it doesn't feel like a useful explanation for what is happening.
Five percent of iPhones is still an enormous number when Apple sells ~200,000,000 iPhones per year. (And that's despite Apple not catering for this market for the past three product cycles. Imagine if they did!)
Ballpark, that probably still is true. If people buy a replacement every four years, they’ll sell about 240 million a year. That doesn’t require them to attract millions of new users each year.
Now, why do users buy replacements? They may lose them, the devices may break down, Apple and/or app makers may stop supporting them, and new ones are significantly better (even if all updates are, as you claim, small, they still accumulate into big ones over the years)
Apple sold over 200 million iPhones last year, and they make up a relatively small proportion of the overall smartphone market. I don't think there are very many people like you describe.
Apple has been selling an average of 100,000 iPhones a day for at least the last 6 months.
For the analysts that want to see growth in your growth so they can hype while you boom, I'd bet that they'll break through that 'plateau' when they release the next model in June.
"Delving deeper into the retention and user metrics, iPhone and iPad users are 52% more loyal to their apps than Android users. A healthy 35% of Apple iOS users launched an app more than 10 times after downloading, compared to 23% of Android users."
I'm finding conflicting numbers on mobile browser share, but none of them are making the iPhone look particularly weak either.
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I see two scenarios that could theoretically actually hurt Apple (not just in a slowed growth kind of way, but by actually causing their revenue to fall): iPhone users ditch the platform for something else they like better, or another platform becomes more lucrative to develop for, causing developers to abandon the iOS App Store and leading users to abandon the iPhone over the lack of new and updated apps.
From the bits of data I can dig up, that doesn't look like a terribly immediate threat: iPhone users are still ridiculously loyal to the platform and still far more willing to spend money on apps. Some of this is old data and things change quickly, so life could be worse for Apple than I realize.
That said, the closest things I could find to reasons to worry: Android users do seem to be becoming increasingly happy with their phones, or at least the platform, and they're downloading apps at a rate approaching what Apple's App Store sees, even if it hasn't led to the same developer revenues iOS produces yet. Apple's dominance profit-wise is far from guaranteed, and Android is a legitimate threat that could eventually bring down the empire.
I'm having a hard time believing Apple's hurting at the moment though in any way besides a drop in share price. Revenue is healthy and growing. iPhone sales are healthy and growing. Profit is healthy if a bit stagnant. (Ironically enough, it's a decline in margins hurting Apple right now, not sales.) iPhone users seem to like their phones enough to buy upgrades, and to buy and use apps on them, and Apple is still winning new converts.
If this is what hurting is, Apple sure makes hurting look attractive.
I don't really buy that. Can you point to any evidence people are updating devices less frequently? Apple sold more iPhones in Q1 of 2016 then they did in Q1 of 2015 so are you extrapolating from a single down quarter?
If iPhone owners buy a new iPhone every 2.5 years, then it corresponds to a total of 600 million iPhone owners worldwide, or 7.5 % of the world’s population. The numbers aren’t that baffling when you consider the size of the market.
Even 2% I would not call "virtually no one". 232 million iPhones were sold in 2022, 2% of that is still 4 million iPhones.
However looking at another survey of specifically iPhone users I see as high as 36%.
Going further, of those that upgrade every year how many of those are getting the highest pro models?
Or are subscribed to Apple iPhone Upgrade Program. Even if they are a lower portion of the population they are a consistent and important part of the population.
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