An Off Year for the iPhone?
Although iPhone sales only grew by 9.2 percent over the 2020 holiday season, this is a trend we’ve often seen over the years, and it’s actually a more typical number for iPhone growth.
Apple may have chosen to call the 2021 iPhone models the “iPhone 13,” but in many ways they were typical “S” models — those in-between models that Apple used to release each year with minimal physical design changes, focusing instead on a handful of new features.
Unlike prior S models, which typically brought groundbreaking innovations like Siri and Touch ID, the iPhone 13 didn’t move the bar nearly as much. To be clear, it’s still a worthy upgrade from anything older than an iPhone 12, but it also wasn’t as exciting as the iPhone 12 release.
The numbers also bear that out. iPhone sales last year surged by a whopping 17.2 percent, but even that was an aberration, likely driven by pent-up demand. In Q1 2020 — which was just before the global pandemic changed everything — iPhone sales only grew by 7.6 percent over the prior quarter — a time when many folks knew a 5G iPhone was on the horizon, and were waiting to see what would come next.
In other words, the iPhone 13 still sold better than the iPhone 11 did two years ago, but it’s also worth noting that we’re talking about growth in sales here. Despite a mere 7.6 percent increase over the iPhone XS/XR era, the iPhone 11 still dominated smartphone sales that holiday season.