CIRP

Apple’s recent decision to replace the iPhone SE with the more premium iPhone 16e marks a shift in the company’s approach to the budget smartphone market — and it might be a big risk, according to new research. The new iPhone 16e, priced at $599, represents a pretty big jump from the iPhone SE’s $429 price point. And that raises questions about whether Apple’s strategy will pay off. Will iPhone SE owners buy iPhone 16e?

A new study sheds light on which Apple Watch model consumers buy most — and least, and in between — Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) said Wednesday. Enthusiasts who assume the most popular Apple Watch model must be the biggest and best (Ultra 2) or the most cost-effective (SE2) miss the mark. They might be surprised that middle-market Series 9 takes the crown, followed by Series 8, which Apple no longer even sells.

The Apple News+ service is growing its subscription rate about four times as fast as major news sites like The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal, according to a new report.

Hey, when you sell the hardware, you have an advantage in attracting users’ eyeballs to content, too, right?

A new report Wednesday from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) revisits the group’s recent finding that Android users increasingly switched to iPhone in recent years and gets into the reasons why.

It gave four specific major reasons and a fifth vague but important one, below.

The iPhone 11 along with the Pro series reportedly accounted for a sizable chunk of Apple’s August-through-September handset sales, even though they were only available for two weeks during that quarter.

The most popular new model is the 6.1-inch iPhone 11, which costs significantly less than that iPhone 11 Pro series.

The iPhone XR is currently far and away Apple’s top-selling iPhone model in the U.S.. Right now, it makes up just under half of all new iPhone models sold in Apple’s biggest market.

That’s the highest percentage of sales for a single iPhone model since the iPhone 6 back in 2015.

Apple’s iPhone sales in the U.S. are starting to flatline, according to data from the Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.

Growth of the iPhone install base in the U.S. has been on a downward trend for years now, but CIRP’s latest report reveals that growth was at its slowest rate ever during the first quarter of 2019.

The iPhone XR accounted for 38 percent of all Apple’s US handset sales during the first three months of this this year, according to a market research company.

Combined with the iPhone XS and XS Max, these 2018 models totaled 59 percent of all iOS handset sales in the US last quarter.

The days of crazy iPhone growth may be over, but the U.S. install base continues to tick upward — growing 14 percent relative to the December 2018 quarter.

According to new research published by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, Apple’s total U.S. install base (the number of active iPhones being used) currently stands at 189 million units. With the U.S. population in the vicinity of 325.7 million people, that’s more than one iPhone for every two people in the country.

The smart speaker contest may be a two-horse race between the Amazon Echo and Google Home, but Apple’s HomePod is starting to carve out a share as well.

According to new research from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, the total smart speaker market has now reached 50 million units in the United States. Among the installed base of U.S. devices, Amazon has 70 percent, Google has 24 percent and Apple has 6 percent.

iOS increased its market share in the U.S. over the most recent quarter, a new report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners reveals.

The newly published research claims that iOS devices accounted for 39 percent of new mobile device activations over Q4, compared to only a 34 percent increase this time last year. Android, meanwhile, saw activations fall from 71 percent to 64 percent.

The iPhone 8 and 8 Plus are likely performing worse than expected for a full-number iPhone release, according to a new report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.

Instead, CIRP suggests iPhone 8 sales figures are far closer to an iPhone “s” release. That makes a lot of sense, given that the iPhone 8 line is shipping the same year as the eagerly anticipated iPhone X.

After gloomy early reviews and alleged lower-than-expected orders by Apple, it seems the iPad Pro may have struck a chord with users after all.

A research firm claims that Apple’s giant tablet performed impressively over the all-important December quarter, despite its high price point.

Everyone knows that Apple does a stellar job of getting its users to upgrade to its latest version of iOS, but how does it do at convincing customers to buy its latest iPhones and iPads, rather than settling for cheaper older models?

Very well, and getting better all the time, according to new market research from the Chicago-based Consumer Intelligence Research Partners.

Looking at consumer data for the calendar quarter which ended June 30, CIRP noted that the flagship iPhone 5s accounted for an impressive 62 percent of total iPhone sales in the quarter, while the iPad Air took 52 percent of all iPad sales in the quarter. Why is this significant?

Consumers update their iPhones at a fairly aggressive pace: when a contract expires, usually within two years, most consumers immediately upgrade to another one. But that’s not the way people upgrade their iPhones… in fact, it’s looking like iPads might be, for most consumers, more like Macs, which are replaced every 2-4 years.

Apple has regained its lead over Android in the battle for U.S. smartphone marketshare, according to the latest report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP).

Going by CIRP’s figures, in the final quarter of 2013 iOS eked out a 2 percent advantage over Android — with Apple capturing 48 percent of the market to Google’s 46 percent.

When Apple unveiled the iPad Air back in October, they curiously decided to keep the iPad 2 around for another generation at a $399 price point… the exact same price as an entry-level iPad mini with Retina Display.

In theory, Apple’s idea here seems to have been to price the vintage iPad 2 at a sub-$400 price point so as to have a cheaper 9.7-inch tablet available for educational institutions, budget shoppers and the like. But it looks like no one’s really all that interested, with only one customer in twenty opting to buy an iPad 2 in the latest quarter. Despite this, though, average price of a purchased iPad fell for the second year in a row.

The iPhone 5c isn’t a failure by any means, but even so, it’s not selling as well as most people would have expected, with sales of the iPhone 5s believed to outpace its plastic midrange sibling by as much as three to one. And while it’s true that the iPhone 5c is still selling well enough to make it the second- or third-best-selling smartphone at every carrier, it’s still a middling success compared to the iPhone 5s.

Yet maybe that’s what Apple wants. In fact, maybe Apple realized that by selling the previous year’s phone for $100 less, they were cutting into their own margins by selling what was, in design, a luxury phone at a mid-tier cost. If so, the iPhone 5c is working exactly as designed.

Who sells the most iPhones of them all? It’s not a carrier or a third party: it’s Apple itself. In fact, the Cupertino company sells 25% of all American iPhone sales, combined. Even more staggering, though, is that Apple sells one in ten smartphones, too.

Android may have greater market penetration than ever before, but it also has more defectors than ever. According to new data, in fact, more Android users are migrating to the iPhone than ever before.

What are the most popular colors of the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c? According to new data, it’s the space gray iPhone 5s and blue iPhone 5c. But availability may have more to do with that than anything else, at least for the iPhone 5s.

While the iPhone 5s is still difficult to get hold of more than three weeks after its debut — particularly if you want a gold or silver model — you shouldn’t have any problem picking up an iPhone 5c at your local Apple store. That’s because the cheaper device isn’t selling anywhere near as much as its high-end sibling.

According to new research from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP), the iPhone 5s is currently outselling the iPhone 5c more than two to one.

More signs pouring in the iPhone benefitted big time during the holidays. In particular, new research finds some 36 percent of consumers buying the iPhone 4S between October and December 2011 were abandoning other platforms, such as Android or the BlackBerry. The findings were doubly good news for Apple, as researchers found 21 percent of iPhone 4S buyers chose the 64GB smartphone model.