Six Colors on Apple’s Quarterly Results

In a blowout quarter like this one, just about all the numbers look good. The one I’ll call your attention to is average selling price for iPhone, which is up significantly, despite the overall market trend being down, because the price to make a “good enough” smartphone for the low end of the market keeps dropping.

I see two clear reasons for iPhone ASP going up:

  1. The iPhone 6 Plus, which is in heavy demand and has a $100 higher price than the regular iPhone 6 and all previous new iPhones.

  2. The 16/64/128 GB storage tiering, which might be pushing people who would have bought a 32 GB iPhone 6 if it existed to spend the extra $100 for the mid-tier 64 GB model.

I still think selling 16 GB iPhones today is a mistake in the long-term, and from a branding perspective, but Apple might be laughing all the way to the bank on this.

See Also: Six Colors’s transcript of Tim Cook’s prepared remarks and Q&A session on the analyst conference call. He says they’re on pace to begin shipping Apple Watch in April.

★ Tuesday, 27 January 2015