iPhone Pro and Pro Max May Have Plateaued

For observers who wish to compare this season’s launch of the iPhone 15 models to previous ones, Apple continues to make life hard. It switches models, delays launches, and otherwise creates difficulty in analyzing what’s going on. Nonetheless, CIRP perseveres, seeking to establish clarity for our readers.

Apple launched its new iPhone 15 models in mid-September. These include the base iPhone 15 and larger iPhone 15 Plus, and premium iPhone 15 Pro and its larger partner, iPhone 15 Pro Max. To add to the confusion, in 2022 Apple released the iPhone 14 Plus in October, so it was not included in our analysis of the September quarter. 

The 2022 iPhone 14 Plus model essentially replaced the iPhone mini models from the iPhone 12 and 13 lineups, further confounding comparisons. Finally, Apple does all this a couple of weeks before the end of the fiscal year, so the new models contribute to sales in the final weeks of the just-ended period, along with the legacy lineup launched a year ago and earlier. You see what we mean…

Despite this, we have early evidence about how the iPhone 15 models launched. It’s too soon to declare definitively which specific models have done well or poorly. Still, we see at least one trend continuing: demand for the top-of-the-line Pro models is most stable and may start trending downward. 

In the September 2023 quarter, the new iPhone 15 Pro and Pro Max combined for a 15% share of total US iPhone sales, slightly below the 17% share for the then-new iPhone 14 Pro and Pro Max models in September 2022 (Chart 1).