Late-Arriving iPhone X Costs Apple Market Share
December 5, 2017 by Paul Ausick
The data were reported Tuesday by Kantar Worldpanel ComTech, based on research by the firm’s global consumer panel.
Market share declined by 6.9% in Japan, 1.6% in Germany, 0.6% in France and 0.5% in Italy. Share rose 0.5% in China and 4.4% in Spain.
Alphabet Inc.’s (NASDAQ: GOOGL) Android operating system gained 4.3 percentage points in the big five European markets, 8.2% in the United States and 7.5% in Japan. Kantar attributed that partly to a continued decline in share for Microsoft Corp.’s (NASDAQ: MSFT) Windows Phone operating system.
Kantar global business unit director Dominic Sunnebo said:
It was somewhat inevitable that Apple would see volume share fall once we had a full comparative month of sales taking into account the non-flagship iPhone 8 vs. the flagship iPhone 7 from 2016. This decrease is significant and puts pressure on the iPhone X to perform. Considering the complete overhaul that the iPhone X offers, consumers may be postponing their purchase decisions until they can test the iPhone X and decide whether the higher price, compared to the iPhone 8, is worth the premium to them.
According to Kantar, as of October 35.3% of Apple’s installed base in Europe and the United States had owned their iPhones for more than two years. That is up from 30.1% in the same period last year. Sunnebo continued:
[The increase in the percentage of older iPhones signifies] considerable pent-up demand within Apple’s base. In pure value terms, it is likely the iPhone X average selling price will more than make up for a dip in sales of older iPhone models.
Apple is among the top five smartphone brands in China that accounted for 91% of sales during the three months ended in October. Samsung’s sales in China have fallen to just 2.2% of the market.
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