Apple’s new iPhones are expensive, with the iPhone Xs Max priced over $1,000. While there will always be a demand for iPhones, the price points will definitely put some customers off, and this is why analyst Ming-Chi Kuo believes that this could potentially lead to better than expected demand for the iPhone XR.
For those unfamiliar, the iPhone XR is the LCD model of Apple’s 2018 lineup. It is priced starting at $750 which isn’t exactly “cheap” per se, but it is a more affordable model. Plus for the most part it has the same hardware as the iPhone Xs and Xs Max, save for the display type and the camera, but otherwise it will be powered by the same chipset, have Face ID, and so on.
According to Kuo’s predictions, Apple is expected to ship 36 to 38 million iPhone XR units in the fourth quarter of the year, up from 33 to 35 million units from his earlier prediction. Of course shipping numbers doesn’t necessarily translate into actual sales, so it should probably be taken with a grain of salt for now.
Kuo also claims that the iPhone XR could outsell the iPhone 8 from 2017 which was Apple’s slightly more affordable take on the iPhone compared to the iPhone X back then. Whether or not this holds true remains to be seen, but Kuo had also previously stated that Apple is expected to maintain its LCD iPhones even in 2019.