Strong holiday sales ‘vindicate’ iPhone X’s fat price tag

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iphone x
There are mixed messages about the iPhone X's success.
Photo: Ste Smith/Cult of Mac

The iPhone X is being cast as a failure for Apple in some parts of the press, but according to the latest figures from Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, the flagship iPhone was in the three top-selling phones across Europe, Japan, Australia, and the United States in the month of December.

Apple’s high price for the handset? Vindicated.

“The full results for the last quarter of the year show that Apple’s decision to release three new handsets over a staggered period, including the ultra high-end iPhone X, has been a sound one,” said Dominic Sunnebo, Global Director for Kantar Worldpanel ComTech. “With Apple’s existing release structure, expectations would always be that the flagship model would be the top selling device in key developed markets, but with the premium price of iPhone X, real life affordability has come into play. Given that in December iPhone X made it into the top three best-selling devices across all key regions, particularly in urban China where it was the top selling model, the pricing strategy seems to have been vindicated.”

iPhone X: Hit or a miss?

So far, there have been mixed messages about the success of Apple’s iPhone X in the market place, with many citing the higher price point as the reason. This week, the news site Nikkei reported that Apple has told suppliers to reduce iPhone X production to 20 million units for the first quarter of 2018 — from more than 40 million handsets down to just 20 million. This has seemingly been corroborated by the Wall Street Journal, which claims that Apple has reduced component orders by as much as 60 percent in some cases.

Nonetheless, analysts are predicting big things for Apple this quarter, and many expect that the iPhone X supercycle will help push the company over the $1 trillion valuation mark.

Whether or not the hiked handset price has worked out for Apple will ultimately be revealed when the company announces its next-gen 2018-era iPhones’ pricing. At present, the company is reportedly trying to decide between two OLED handsets and one LCD model, and one OLED model and two LCD handsets.

Kantar also reports that iOS made a gain of 0.7 percent in operating system market share in five big European markets in December. This brings its total to 24.8 percent — although it fell 2.4 percentage points in the U.S.

Source: Kantar

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