iPhone Analyst Games

Even when they say something nice about iPhones, Analysts manage to find a way to tick me off. Perhaps to build Apple’s stock up before WWDC (to bring it down as we get closer to the next iPhone sales cycle), Daniel Ives of GBH Insights claims that Apple has a 250 to 350 billion dollar opportunity for a NEW, NEW, NEW SUPERCYCLE of iPhone sales!

Except it really doesn’t matter to anyone outside of stock speculators and the analysts that feed them. Whether Apple sells the 150 million iPhones like in 2013 or the 217 million of 2017, we aren’t going to see jumps like between the 170 million of 2014 (iPhone 5S) to the 231 million of 2015 (iPhone 6). That was a 27% jump year over year, mostly due to pent up demand for a larger iPhone.

We aren’t looking at any major changes to iPhones for next year so people with older phones that don’t do what they want to anymore will upgrade and those satisfied with the iPhone they already have won’t.

Apple has yearly increases of the number of iPhones they sell with the exception of 2015 to 2016 when unit sales actually dropped by 20 million units. With the iPhone 6 being an aberration rather than the norm, Apple doesn’t need Supercycles to impress anyone because they have something more important than a suddenly hot, in-demand phone. Something that puts them ahead of every single Android phone and device maker out there and it isn’t what you might think it is. It’s NOT iOS, or ApplePay, or tie ins to the Apple Watch, or CarPlay, or anything else technical in nature.

It’s just one word…retention. Apple has more repeat business that any other company out there and that brand loyalty means more than FaceID or missing headphone ports or problems with iTunes, or bendable frames. The retention rate of iPhones is the envy of every other phone maker out there and something that Google and Samsung can only aspire to but will never see. Some put it as high as 92%. Think about that for a second. 92% of all iPhone users are most likely going to buy another one. Even with all of the issues that Apple has had lately, up to 92% of people that own an iPhone will buy another rather than buy an Android phone. This says more about the perception of Android than it does about Apple fanboys. Because you don’t get 10-20% of a global market, with hundreds of companies competing against each other on price with the most expensive series of phones on the market if you aren’t doing something right.