KGI’s Mingchi Kuo, an analyst with a solid track-record, and the man who came closest (almost) to calling opening weekend sales of the iPhone, now believes Apple shipped ‘just’ 11.4M iPhone 5c handsets in September, rather than the 17M he had earlier forecast, reports Business Insider.
This makes some sense of the rampant discounting seen on the 5C (which actually started at Walmart before launch), but doesn’t necessarily mean that iPhone sales as a whole are down …
While it seems clear that Apple and other outlets over-estimated early demand for the 5c despite limiting TV advertising to the cheaper of the two models, continuing stock shortages of the 5s suggest that this has been balanced by Apple under-estimating demand for the more expensive handset.
Apple is not expected to announce the breakdown of sales between the 5C and 5S but we’ll find out whether momentum from the record-breaking start has been maintained when Apple reports its Q4 earnings on 28th October.
