The iPhone 6 Plus has only been on the market for a few months, but according to a report from Kantar, Apple’s bigger than big device captured 41% of U.S. phablet sales in the quarter ending with October 2014.
What’s even more impressive is that Apple managed to take a huge chunk of the market with only one full month of sales in the quarter. Kantar reports that among smartphones with a 5.5-inch screen or larger, Apple is absolutely dominating the trendy new category that now represents ten percent of all smartphone sales.
The iPhone 6 is also performing strong. Its first month of sales accounted for 33% of new iOS device sales in the third quarter of 2014. The iPhone 5s was still the second best selling iPhone with 26%, while the iPhone 5c came in third with 18%. The iPhone 6 Plus only accounted for 10% of iOS device sales, but it only had one month to compete against the other models.
Among iPhone 6 Plus buyers, 58% said screen size was the primary reason they went with the bigger device, while 60% of iPhone 6 buyers said the same thing of the more compact new iPhone.
On the Android side of life, Samsung’s Galaxy S5 captured 22% of sales, while the S4 only saw 12%. Tim Cook hoped the iPhone 6 would trigger an avalanche of Android switchers, but Kantar’s data suggest only 9% of iPhone 6 and 6 Plus buyers are coming over from Android.
Source: Kantar
Buster Hein is a freelance writer who lives in Phoenix, Arizona. Twitter: @bst3r.
9 responses to “iPhone 6 Plus captured 41% of U.S. phablet sales in first month”
The first month is the easiest…
Wall Street is going to continue to dump all over Apple because of them losing global market share. That’s all Wall Street is interested in. Wall Street continues to spout how important growth is in BRIC nations and how Apple stupidly isn’t willing to spend the time and effort to capture any BRIC nation market share. Meaning, no low-end iPhones except for the older versions. Wall Street absolutely hates this attitude so that’s why American analysts and investors are always praising Xiaomi and Huawei for beating the crap out of Apple at the low end of the smartphone spectrum. I don’t see anything wrong in Apple letting those companies have all the low-end smartphone market they want. Why should Apple try to hog the whole show?
Market share, market share, Apple must have more market share at the low end or the company’s growth will be completely stifled. They’d probably also want Porsche to compete with Kia’s low-end offerings. I don’t know why the news media doesn’t just ignore Apple and go after some other company that’s happy to build cheap junk to give to the poverty-class masses. It’s a shame a company like Apple isn’t allowed to run their business the way they feel it’s best for them. There’s always those know-it-all outsiders who think their own way is much, much better.
Apple can barely make enough of their current line up to even bother with the low end models, since Apple has a finite amount of production levels. It takes just as much time to slap together a $600+ phone as it does a $100. These analysts simply don’t understand the issue. It’s all about the bottom line. Apple has proven that they can make just as much Net Profits as their ENTIRE Android community with only a small percentage of market share. If Apple did more low end products, they’d have to support older OSs on older h/w and they’d start losing profits hand over fist.
“…only 9% are switching from Android…” – that is actually an amazing result.
There were only 12 days of iPhone 6 and 6+ sales in the quarter, which ended 30 Sept
No, they are going by Oct. numbers. I think what Kantar is doing is going back 3 months every month. Which is a weird way of looking al the numbers. It states “captured 41% of U.S. phablet sales in the quarter ending with October 2014.”
Either way, every time they analyze the numbers, they seem to do it with only a small amount of time for Apple sales. They should be discussing this after December quarter is over with.
You are correct, thanks for the correction. Not sure why Kantar can’t simply say “quarter ending 31 Oct”…
Obviously, Apple is going to have to do a lot more to convince Android users to switch to or back to Apple.
Remember, a lot of Android users use Windows PCs and they act like a typical PC user.
They also want as many features as they can get, RAM, they look at the number of cores/clock speed, and they like an Open OS, being able to root and customize the OS, etc.
I do think that Apple does need to look at ways to improve the OS and hardware.
No they don’t. The hardware consistently bests anything else on the market, partially due to the full software integration.