{"id":77,"date":"2012-01-09T23:12:00","date_gmt":"2012-01-09T23:12:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/?p=77"},"modified":"2020-08-07T03:23:10","modified_gmt":"2020-08-07T03:23:10","slug":"np","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/2012\/01\/09\/np\/","title":{"rendered":"NPD\u2019s Top Three Smartphones are iPhones"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>TechCrunch has\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/2012\/01\/09\/ios-marketshare-up-from-26-in-q3-to-43-in-octnov-2011\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">relayed a new NPD report<\/a>\u00a0tracking \u201cmarket share\u201d in the fourth quarter of 2011. It shows a \u201cmarket share\u201d of 43% for iOS to 47% for Android. I put \u201cmarket share\u201d in quotes because it\u2019s listed as \u201csmartphone\u201d market share, and it\u2019s not clear whether or not iPod touch and iPad, or the various Android tablets, are (or should be) included.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>What interests me much more is the by-model breakdown of sales according to NPD. There are currently three iPhone models available \u2014 iPhone 4S ($199), iPhone 4 ($99), and iPhone 3GS (free) \u2014 and they occupy the top three slots&nbsp;<em>in that order<\/em>. This may not be an entirely new phenomenon, particularly not for Apple products, but I still find it remarkable. It contradicts what most people keep insisting is conventional wisdom: that cheap and\/or free models will always steal volume from premium models. Despite price and variety pressure from various Android models, and even pricing pressure from&nbsp;<em>other iPhone models running the same exact software<\/em>, the iPhone 4S was still the top-selling smartphone in the United States (according to NPD, at least). And this report is only for October and November \u2014 it doesn\u2019t include Christmas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>You can\u2019t explain this with the usual hand wave of \u201cmarketing.\u201d If people are opening their wallets for Siri because of the latest commercials, for example, it doesn\u2019t explain why the iPhone 4, without Siri and $99 more than the free 3GS, is #2. At face value, I wouldn\u2019t think Siri is worth $200 to the average consumer, and I definitely wouldn\u2019t think \u201cspeed and a Retina display\u201d are worth $99 to them. Surely Apple Retail staffers are pushing the higher-end models, but I still think the average person will gravitate towards free, especially if nearly all the features are there. (Related: my parents now own an iPhone 4 and an iPhone 4S. I had very little to do with it.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Even though the 3GS finished \u201clast\u201d among the iPhones, it&nbsp;<em>still<\/em>&nbsp;outscores any individual Android model, which is again remarkable to me. And it shows that despite what many Apple observers like to say, Apple does in fact care about market share \u2014 at least for now. I can\u2019t imagine Apple looks forward to qualifying and performance testing new software releases on two-year-old hardware that isn\u2019t significantly improving the bottom line, but that\u2019s what\u2019s happening. (At the moment, iOS 5.0.1 &nbsp;still performs very well on my old 3GS). More than one high-up person has decided that moving these units at any cost is a current priority. The impact on the user base, and the psychological impact of three iPhones on top instead of two, are apparently worth the trouble.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>TechCrunch has\u00a0relayed a new NPD report\u00a0tracking \u201cmarket share\u201d in the fourth quarter of 2011. It shows a \u201cmarket share\u201d of 43% for iOS to 47% for Android. I put \u201cmarket share\u201d in quotes because it\u2019s listed as \u201csmartphone\u201d market share, and it\u2019s not clear whether or not iPod touch and iPad, or the various Android [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=77"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.appleoutsider.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}