Mike Wuerthele
An analyst's examination of iPhone 7 buyers at launch sees more customers looking at 128GB models versus 256GB, with the vast majority of early buyers upgraders from older iPhones rather than switchers from Android.
Financial analyst firm Piper Jaffray polled 83 people waiting in line for an iPhone 7. The company found that 54% of launch buyers were looking at buying an iPhone 7, with the remaining 46% set on buying the iPhone 7 plus, what the firm calls "essentially the inverse" of launch traffic for the iPhone 6 and 6s.
According to the firm, more buyers were seeking the 128 GB capacity than the 256 GB model, which may have been affected by the larger phone not being available at retail. The analyst firm assumes that the larger Plus-sizes of the iPhone also will attract customers seeking higher storage capacities, as it has in the past.
Additionally, 98% of the buyers in line already owned an iPhone, with only 2% being switchers from Android. Between the small sample size, and prevalence of launch day purchasers being upgraders from older iPhones, little weight was attributed to the switcher percentages by the firm.
Previous launches differed somewhat as far as switcher numbers. For the iPhone 6s launch, 88% of buyers were loyalists to Apple. Notably, the iPhone 6s launch population sample size was lower than the current group.
Despite difficulties in pre-ordering phones on the iPhone Upgrade Program on launch day, 34% of the respondents were planning on using the program to finance the day's purchase. Piper Jaffray believes that approximately 25% of iPhone sales in the US are made at Apple retail locations, with about 9% of the total being sold through the upgrade program.
Piper Jaffray believes that the polling size decrease over the peak of 608 hit with the iPhone 4 has little to do with demand, and more to do with the vast array of pre-ordering options now available to customers.
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17 Comments
So one of the leading industry analysts gets press for 83 interviews?
AI's postings have just about hit bottom with this dribble. AI, you could have written this in light of what it is...an 'analyst' looking to get their and/or their Company's name in print. You could have chastised the 'analyst' for even suggesting that there was some relevance to their "survey."
Sad, AI, just sad!
64GB is the sweet spot for me, since my photos, videos, and music are in the cloud, But since they dropped this size I had to go to 128GB.
Think how many more phones they would have sold if they actually had the PLUS at the stores. Apple shot themselves in the foot big time on this one. It's not like the past where you buy iPhone 7 then turn it in for the PLUS when they get more in "in a few days".
This time apple warned customers "make sure this is the one you want because 30 days will pass before the stores will get the first PLUS models and you won't be able to swap out".
This was an exact quote from three different store managers from three different stores.
I am waiting the biggest storage I can get. I am coming from a 16 GB iPhone and oh boy I hate it. By the way this is my wife's iPhone. We just swapped. I gave her my Galaxy S6 Edge Plus because I couldn't the bloatware that is Touchwhiz.