The iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Pro have been available for pre-order since Friday, and esteemed analyst Ming-Chi Kuo has outlined some of his comments and observations on the pre-order performance of each iPhone 15 model.
In a post on Medium, Kuo claims that demand for the iPhone 15 Pro Max appears to be “robust” so far, with pre-order numbers likely higher than that of the iPhone 14 Pro Max last year. With shipping estimates slipping into November for some configurations of the 6.7-inch high-end iPhone, Kuo reiterates that a late mass production schedule for the device is also to blame for the two-month shipping delay, adding that “current production challenges are more pronounced than other models.”
On the other hand, demand for the smaller iPhone 15 Pro is said to be “weaker” compared to last year’s iPhone 14 Pro. Kuo predicts that the reason for this trend is the appeal of the 5x tetraprism telephoto lens which is exclusive to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, causing more premium users to prefer the larger Pro iPhone device.
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Furthermore, the number of customers opting for the base iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus is “roughly on par” with last year’s iPhone 14 models, adds Kuo. This ultimately means that the pre-order performance of the entire iPhone 15 lineup is about the same as it was with the iPhone 14 series last year, which is actually a good sign for Apple since most analysts were expecting a sales decline this year compared to the iPhone 14 amid a shrinking global smartphone market.
Overall, Kuo still anticipates that Apple will roughly ship over 80 million iPhone 15 units in total during the remainder of 2023, a number that is higher than iPhone 14 shipments during the same period last year when labor protests in a key iPhone assembly plant forced Apple to cut production by a few million units.
Nevertheless, Apple could experience a sales dip going forward, especially in China due to Huawei’s resurgence with its release of the Mate 60 Pro, though Kuo remains unsure of how big Huawei’s impact could be on the iPhone’s sales performance.
