Report: iPhone X Posts Strong Adoption Despite Extended Ship Times

After its first weekend since launch, Apple’s iPhone X is already registering some impressive user adoption, as reported by Localytics. This is pretty remarkable despite the fact that many buyers are yet to get their units because of ship times extending to five to six weeks just an hour after Apple started accepting preorders for the highly awaited flagship device.

According to Localytics’ report, the iPhone X captured a 0.93 percent of the overall market share for iPhone devices after the first weekend of release. Instead of citing iPhone sales, Localytics looks into the market share based on the app usage of mobile users. The company achieves this by way of a mobile engagement platform that runs across 2.7 billion handsets and 37,000 mobile and web apps. In completing its newest report, the firm evaluated more than 70 million iOS powered smartphone devices, and then measured its latest findings with historical data on previous iPhone launches.

With a market share of only 0.93 percent, the iPhone X ranks 13th among today’s most used iPhone devices (last year’s iPhone 7 leads comfortably with a 19.74 percent share). That may not be much, but considering that percentage refers only to the first weekend since launch, it is actually not bad. The iPhone X’s first weekend user adoption share also manages to be better than that of the iPhone 8 and iPhone 8 Plus models (just 0.7 percent), which goes to show that, yep, Apple fans were really more excited about the iPhone X compared to the iPhone 8. 

It bears noting, however, that the all time best ever first weekend user adoption goes to 2014’s iPhone 6, which recorded a truly amazing 2.3 percent share in its first weekend. In comparison, last year’s iPhone 7 models had a 1.2 percent share during the first weekend, while 2015’s iPhone 6s devices enjoyed a 1.3 percent share. But remember -- those models did not have to face the availability issues that the iPhone X is dealing with now. 

In other iPhone X related news, IDC has published its latest report and it is projecting that the release of the iPhone X will result to significantly increased demand for iPhone devices in the world’s biggest market for smartphone devices -- China. This may not be entirely unexpected -- Apple did reveal a few days ago that it had managed to register a 12 percent year over year improvement in terms of sales in the region during the third quarter of this year.