Oliver Haslam·

iPhone 8 Is Apple’s Slowest-Selling Phone Since 2013 And iPhone X Is To Be Blamed For It

Last Friday saw the release of the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus, and while the shadow of the impending iPhone X release still looms large, it was anticipated that sales of the new phones would be strong given the impressive features and speed increase they offer.

Factor in the somewhat steep asking price of the iPhone X, and the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus are devices that have a lot of promise. That said, if new figures released by analytics firm Localytics are accurate though, sales may have been disappointing.

Localytics gets its numbers from the downloading and use of any of the 37,000 apps which use the Localytics SDK. That obviously means that its numbers are unlikely to be exact, but they should at least offer an idea as to how well a phone is doing with regards to sales, especially when compared to previous releases.

In that regard, the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus appear to be the weakest release for years. Apple no longer announces its own sales numbers, so for now, analytics provided by Localytics is the best we have to go on.

In years past, we’ve announced how many new iPhones had been sold as of the first weekend following launch. But as we have expanded our distribution through carriers and resellers to hundreds of thousands of locations around the world, we are now at a point where we know before taking the first customer pre-order that we will sell out of iPhone 7.

These initial sales will be governed by supply, not demand, and we have decided that it is no longer a representative metric for our investors and customers. Therefore we won’t be releasing a first-weekend number any longer.

Based on Localytics’ numbers, during the first weekend of sales the new iPhones combined for a 0.7 percent market share of all iPhone models, the lowest since the iPhone 5s in 2013. The iPhone 8 Plus did however garner the biggest share of any Plus model to date, suggesting the trend towards larger iPhones continues.

The question now is whether people have been holding off buying a new iPhone in order to pick up the iPhone X, or simply whether the iPhone 8 series of handsets is being skipped because the iPhone 7 ticks enough boxes to keep people happy for another year. Based on the general reaction though, it seems likely that most people are holding of until iPhone X for their 2017 smartphone upgrade.

We’ll know for sure when the iPhone X goes on sale on November 3rd.

(Source: Localytics)

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