While wireless operators have been somewhat muted in touting opening week sales of Apple’s latest iPhone 6 and 6 Plus models, a new report from Slice Intelligence found T-Mobile US outperformed its market share in terms of pre-orders placed prior to the device launch.
Slice Intelligence reported that T-Mobile US garnered 19% of online pre-orders for the iPhone 6 and 20.1% of pre-orders for the iPhone 6 Plus between Sept. 12-14. That share was above T-Mobile US’ current overall market share of around 16%, which is likely well ahead of its overall iPhone market share considering the carrier only officially began offering Apple’s iPhone products early last year.
By comparison, AT&T Mobility posted the largest share of pre-orders at 47.4% for the iPhone 6 and 53.8% for the iPhone 6 Plus. That larger share was expected as AT&T Mobility has a much larger embedded base of iPhone users — which leads to more upgrades — thanks to its initial four-plus-year exclusivity in offering the device as well as its approximately one-third total domestic wireless market share.
Verizon Wireless looked to have held its own in the report, garnering 28.5% of total iPhone 6 pre-orders and 21.2% of iPhone 6 Plus pre-orders. The carrier was the first outside of AT&T Mobility to offer the device, and leading up to the launch of the iPhone 6 introduced a trade-in offer providing for a free iPhone 6 if customers turned in certain iPhone 5S models and signed a new two-year contract.
The biggest loser, according to Slice, was Sprint, which managed to field just 5.2% of iPhone 6 and 4.9% of iPhone 6 Plus pre-orders. This despite the carrier rolling out a less expensive unlimited plan exclusively for the iPhone as well as its “iPhone-for-life” program that provides customers with a new model every two years.
“Outside of Cupertino, the big winner of the iPhone 6 launch was T-Mobile, which managed to capture about 20% of all pre-orders opening weekend, outperforming its market share,” noted Kanishka Agarwal, chief data officer at Slice Intelligence. “T-Mobile’s grab of these consumers is an indication that their aggressive switching campaign is gaining traction — especially considering that about [one-third] of pre-orders were upgrading the iPhone 5S, which came out less than a year ago and would have been tied to a contract.”
Slice Intelligence also found that 85% of customers that pre-ordered an iPhone 6 were upgrading from a previous iPhone model, with the most coming from the iPhone 5 (36.4%), followed by the 5S (32.6%), 4S (8.7%), 4 (4.4%) and 5C (3.3%).
Apple had reported that it racked up 4 million pre-orders over the first 24 hours, and reported this week that it sold a record 10 million iPhone 6 and 6 Plus devices over its opening weekend across the U.S., Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Japan, Puerto Rico, Singapore and the U.K.
More details on the launch are expected to come next month as Apple and mobile operators begin reporting quarterly results.
Slice Intelligence said it gleans its insight by tapping into a panel of more than 2 million online shoppers, extracting data from electronics receipts.
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