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TechApple

Look Who’s Buying Apple’s Retro iPhone

By
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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By
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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March 30, 2016, 8:44 AM ET

Sales of Apple’s 4-inch iPhone SE began with a whimper, according to Slice Intelligence, an analytics firm that extracts marketable data from the e-mail receipts of four million compliant online shoppers.

Based on its analysis of first weekend orders, total iPhone SE sales could come in at just 3% of the record 10 million-plus iPhone 6 units sold over three days in 2014. That works out to roughly 300,000 iPhone SEs—a rather modest number by Apple’s (AAPL) standards.

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Along with sales numbers, Slice captures all sorts of demographic data, which makes for some interesting charts.

For example, Slice found a disproportionate number of iPhone SE buyers are coming from “other” mobile operating systems, mostly Google’s (GOOGL) Android. (Click on the interactive chart below to see the difference between the SE and the 6S.)

Digging even deeper, Slice reports buyers of the SE “look much different than the Apple fanboy audience typically queuing up to buy the latest from Cupertino. They’re older, less educated, and surprisingly, more male.”

A further indication that the SE is “bringing a new audience to iPhone,” Slice suggests, are the differences in education levels represented in this final chart.

“Only 39% of new SE owners have a college degree,” Slice reports, “whereas 46% of those who pre-ordered an iPhone 6 or 6S did. And while education and income typically correlate closely, there were not sizable differences in income between SE buyers and those of other iPhones, though iPhone SE buyers under-index somewhat among the highest wage earners.”

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By Philip Elmer-DeWitt
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