Monday’s earnings call revealed that Apple was expecting the iPhone 5c to sell better than it did in the United States. Apple CEO Tim Cook said sales growth for the iPhone was not as high as that of other countries, as Apple underestimated the demand for the company’s flagship iPhone 5s handset.
While Apple didn’t break down sales for the individual iPhone models, the company did indicate that the iPhone 5c ended up representing a smaller portion of all iPhone sales than they anticipated.
While the company expected demand for the iPhone 5s and iPhone 5c to be more balanced, demand was much higher for the high-end iPhone 5s, possibly due to the much promoted Touch ID feature.
Cook also mentioned changes U.S. carriers had made to upgrade plans as a partial contributor to weaker than expected U.S. iPhone sales.
“It took us some time in order to build the mix that customers were demanding. As a result, we lost some units for part of the quarter in North America,” Cook said, noting that it took Apple the better part of the quarter to balance the iPhone supply and demand properly.
Multiple reports during the quarter suggested that iPhone 5c sales were performing poorly compared to the iPhone 5s. Shortly following the introduction of the two handsets, it was reported that Apple was cutting production of the iPhone 5c, and in its place was ramping up production of the flagship iPhone 5s.
Apple reported record sales of 51 million iPhones in the quarter, that’s up from 47.8 million in the same time period last year.
