iPhone Sales Mix Continues to Push Average Retail Price Down

We’ve recently noted that Apple makes it difficult for us to understand the trends related to its iPhone launches, with slight changes in model lineups and varied launch timing. One way to distill the changing mix of models and storage capacities is to estimate and follow the average price of an iPhone.

Even before Apple stopped releasing an Average Selling Price (ASP) for iPhones in 2018, CIRP calculated the Weighted Average Retail Price (US-WARP) of iPhones sold in the US. The numbers move similarly, though ASP was a global number, and US-WARP does not take into account wholesale discounts that Apple may offer to different retailers.

In recent months, that average price has shown an interesting and somewhat surprising trend. The average retail list price of an iPhone sold in the US has declined for the last two quarters. 

Specifically, in the September 2023 quarter, US-WARP was $918, down from $948 in the June 2023 quarter and the high of $988 in the March 2023 quarter. This is below the $957 US-WARP from the year-ago September 2022 quarter and the second straight quarter of year-over-year declines (Chart 1).