Analysis: iPhone growth stagnates in us

According to a new analysis released by consumer intelligence research partners (CIRP), apple's iPhone user growth in the U.S. is stagnating due to declining iPhone retention and fewer Android users switching to Apple devices.
Last week, Apple reported revenue of $64 billion for the quarter, including $33.36 billion for iPhones, down 9 percent from a year earlier. The slight decline in iPhone revenue was offset by revenue growth in other areas, including services, wearables and iPads.
CIRP said in its report that the continued growth trend of apple's iPhone sales in the U.S. is slowly coming to a halt, with the smallest sequential growth in the past year. Apple's U.S. iPhone installation base was estimated at 204 million units in the third quarter.
Josh Lowitz, a partner and co-founder of CIRP, said: "Apple is adding the smallest number of iPhones installed in us in a single quarter in six years, and both quarterly and annual growth rates have slowed to their lowest levels since data began in 2012."
CIRP attributes this to a number of factors, including fewer first-time smartphone buyers and fewer Android users switching to iOS. But CIRP added: "the trend of holding phones for longer protects the size of apple's user base, with older iPhones remaining active and preventing people from switching from iOS to android."
CIRP's analysis may be flawed because the 204 million figure is based on an estimate of the 43 million iPhones sold worldwide in the third quarter, which is combined with apple's disclosed average selling price ($783). Apple no longer provides global iPhone sales data, forcing analysts to make guesses based on the official figures and get more information from other third parties.
The last time Apple reported an average selling price for an iPhone, in the fourth quarter of 2018, it was $783.87. By then, Apple had already introduced the iPhone XS and the iPhone XS Max, but the iPhone XR had not yet been released, making it impossible to compare it to the fiscal fourth quarter of 2019, when the iPhone 11 had been on the market for about two weeks.