Over their first weekend of sale, the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C accounted for a record 9 million units sold, representing the biggest movement of devices in a single launch weekend. The numbers keep getting even more impressive with the latest report showing the iPhone 5S and iPhone 5C combined already encompass 5.5 percent of the entire active iPhone population worldwide.
Analytic firm Localytics announced Monday that in addition to this impressive number, the iPhone 5 – the device Apple tried to retire in favour of the iPhone 5C – now represents one out of every four iPhone activations.
“Today, the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c now represents 3.8 percent and 1.7 percent of all active iPhones globally”.
The iPhone 5 remains the most popular device accounting for 39.8 percent of all active iPhones currently in use. The iPhone 4S comes a close second with 32.9 percent, followed by the iPhone 4 which claims 20.2 percent.
Furthermore, the numbers show that the gap between the iPhone 5C and iPhone 5S is still significant, despite reports that the gap was in fact closing down.
iPhone 5S the better device?
The graph does go some way to show suggest why the iPhone 5S may have been completely out of stock in most places, whilst the iPhone 5C remains relatively available. It seems the more premium iPhone 5S has remained the more desirable handset, probably as Apple wanted.
It could be down to two things – either the iPhone 5S was just a better device, and people preferred the fingerprint sensor and M7 motion coprocessor etc, or Apple simply overpriced the iPhone 5C forcing users to consider spending a small premium for what was marketed as the better device.
I don’t know about you guys, but I’m going with the second option. Apple could have wiped Android off the map with a low-cost up-to-date iPhone 5C at the right price point, but they didn’t. Thoughts?