Last Monday after iPhone 5c pre-orders began there was no triumphant press release from Apple. The market dumped Apple shares thinking the 5c had bombed. This past weekend the 5s went on sale. It sold out.
The press release just came out:
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. Both iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c are available in the US, Australia, Canada, China, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Puerto Rico, Singapore and the UK. Demand for iPhone 5s has exceeded the initial supply, and many online orders are scheduled to be shipped in the coming weeks.
Last year Apple sold just over 5 million iPhone 5 devices, then a record. This is almost 2x that number. However Apple doesn’t provide a breakdown of 5s vs. 5c sales. The majority of the sales are likely to have been 5s devices.
I conducted a survey with Opus Research last week and found that there was significant demand in the US for the 5s but less demand for the 5c.
Source: Opus Research, n=1,508 US adults (Sept 16 – 19 2013)
Apple also announced that more than 200 million iPhones and iPads have been upgraded to iOS7, which was released last Thursday.
Postscript: Localytics is now out with data that argue the 5s outsold the 5c by more than 3X in the US:
Localytics added that most of the 5c devices old were on AT&T and then Verizon (no surprise). Outside the US the 5s vs. 5c disparity is even larger:
We can see a similar pattern for international adoption; globally the 5s is outpacing the 5c by a factor of 3.7x. In some countries, the ratio is even more extreme, e.g. in Japan the 5s is outselling the 5c by a factor of 5x.
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