The Average iPhone Sold in the US is Very Expensive
The Average iPhone Sold in the US is Very Expensive
Last week we released CIRP analysis of iPhone model sales in the September 2024 quarter. Now we look at one of the best metrics we have to understand iPhone sales, US-WARP - the weighted average retail price of new iPhones sold in the quarter. The iPhone US-WARP this quarter is the highest we have measured.
The September quarter is a confusing one for iPhone analysis. For about ten weeks, new iPhone buyers consist mostly of those that either don’t quite care about anticipated new model announcements and reduced prices for existing models or those that have an urgent need to replace a missing or malfunctioning smartphone. Then in the final two weeks of the quarter, the most loyal, eager new phone buyers rush into the market. So there are many factors that can drive September quarter US-WARP up or down.
Apple stopped releasing Average Selling Price (ASP) for iPhones in 2018. Fortunately, CIRP had calculated the Weighted Average Retail Price of iPhones sold in the US (US-WARP) for more than five years at that time. 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 the September 2024 quarter, US-WARP was $1,018, up from $971 in the June 2024 quarter and also from $918 in the September 2023 quarter (Chart 1). The September 2024 US-WARP was the highest that CIRP had ever estimated.
Chart 1: iPhone US-Weighted Average Retail Price
Last year US-WARP declined from the June to the September quarter and in 2022 US-WARP increased over the same time period. This metric is an average of the new iPhones sold in the US, so it is independent of actual unit sales. Apple can have a “strong” quarter in unit sales with decent overall iPhone revenue while US-WARP moves up or down.
US-WARP is driven by two factors: which models sell best and how often customers upgrade from base storage. While last week we reported that the newest iPhone 16 models made up a smaller percentage of iPhone sales in the quarter than iPhone 15 models last year, the overall strength of the four iPhone 15 and 16 Pro and Pro Max models, which were all sold during portions of the quarter, had a significant impact on US-WARP. 47% of iPhones sold in the September 2024 quarter were Pro and Pro Max models, compared to 38% in the year-ago quarter, and that drove US-WARP to new heights.
The other lever for US-WARP is storage upgrades and will analyze that in an upcoming report.