The conventional wisdom after the release of the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus was that Apple would steal back some market share from Android as Android users who love owning big phones would flock to the new devices. However, Consumer Intelligence Research Partners (CIRP) has shared some new research with us that suggests that the bigger new iPhones aren’t picking off quite as many Android users as we thought they would.
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In all, CIRP surveyed 300 people who bought a new iPhone after Apple’s big iPhone 6 and 6 Plus launch on September 19th and found that most of them were already dedicated Apple fans.
“Current iPhone owners accounted for over 80% of buyers after this launch, compared to less than 65% after the iPhone 5S and 5C launch in September 2013,” explains CIRP cofounder Josh Lowitz. “Android owners accounted for a much smaller share of buyers immediately after this year’s iPhone launch, and with smartphones so prevalent in the U.S., we also saw a smaller percentage of iPhone buyers moving from basic phones.”
That said, CIRP also found that the iPhone buyers who did switch from Android were more likely to shell out big bucks for the iPhone 6 Plus, which suggests that Apple’s attempts to woo Galaxy Note users with its first phablet have won some important converts.
If there’s anything we can take away from these findings it’s that this fall’s huge iPhone sales numbers show that there was a lot of pent-up demand for bigger iPhones — and not just from Android fans but from Apple fans as well.
