Odd though it may seem, selling a significantly less powerful and less appealing smartphone for barely any discount compared to your flagship smartphone isn’t a good idea. We have seen countless signs that Apple’s iPhone 5c has been a pretty magnificent flop thus far, and now we have one more to add to the growing collection. As shared by Andreessen Horowitz analyst Benedict Evans, the following chart shows iPhone market share on Chinese analytics company Umeng’s network within the first six months of each launch:
The graph paints a fairly clear picture. At the start of fourth month following the iPhone 5’s debut in 2012, the handset’s share of traffic on the Umeng network was nearly 7%. In the same amount of time following the iPhone 5s launch last year, that device had a 12% share of traffic. The iPhone 5c’s share, on the other hand, sat at about 2%.
Bottom line: the iPhone 5c will definitely not go down as the best decision Apple ever made.
Apple reportedly cut production orders for the iPhone 5c almost immediately following its launch, and more recent rumors suggest that the device will be discontinued following the launch of the new iPhone 6 and Apple’s iPhone phablet later this year.
