With yesterday’s AAPL earnings report beating expectations, the iPhone maker seems to have weathered the storm battering other tech companies for now. In today’s Insight Flash, we demonstrate how the combination of our CE Transact and CE Receipt datasets could have provided early insight into iPhone 14 performance, giving a preread on preorders.
CE Transact data is able to capture what US shoppers spend at the Apple Store both online and at the company’s brick-and-mortar locations. Although monthly payment plans and trade-in discounts affect the amount charged on consumer credit and debit cards, this year’s iPhone 14 release showed a remarkably similar lift in spend to last year’s iPhone 13 release the week the phones became available. However, the iPhone 14 has shown stronger spend increases in the five weeks after launch than the iPhone 13 did, emphasizing the importance of continuing to track data beyond the first week of sales.
Apple Store Online + In-Store Spend
Tracking advance demand for the phones can help CE customers get ahead of expected behavior at launch. Although CE Transact data only reflects when new iPhones begin to ship (which is when Apple charges shopper credit and debit cards), CE Receipt data picks up on when customers order the phones. As such, CE Receipt was able to anticipate the spike in spend for Apple a week early, capitalizing on high shopper anticipation.
Preorder Timing
CE Receipt also has the advantage of allowing customers to break down the price per item in an order, showing the difference between someone buying a single phone or a batch of accessories. For the iPhone 14, there was no noticeable change in the average price per item online once the iPhone 14 Plus became available. This implies that either most shoppers put in their 14 Plus orders during the preorder period, or more likely that the model is less popular than the baseline iPhone 14.
Phone Pricing
