A new report suggests that the launch of Samsung's Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge did not affect sales of Apple's iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. The first week's sales data was analyzed in Korea but doesn't account for a precipitous drop-off in iPhone sales in the weeks leading up to Samsung's launch.
According to research firm ATLAS Research & Consulting, the first week launch of Samsung's brand new flagship smartphones, the Galaxy S6 and Galaxy S6 Edge, did not affect sales of Apple's iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus. The research was conducted in Korea, Samsung's home base.
Sales figures were compared for the April 10 launch week as opposed to the week prior, and the iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus did in fact see just a small sales decline of 4.7 percent. According to ATLAS, since the frenzied iPhone launch in September, there has been an organic decline in iPhone sales. As vice chairman of the research firm Jang Joong-hyeok, stated, "It is very natural for iPhone 6 sales to decline, as six months have passed since its release."
The two weeks prior to the launch week of the Galaxy S6 and S6 Edge, however, saw a much steeper drop in iPhone sales, with sales from one week to the next falling 24 percent and 15 percent respectively.
The analysis seems questionable in that it doesn't account for the possibility that anticipation of the release of the new Samsung phones resulted in the rather large drop-offs in iPhone sales several weeks prior to the actual launch. The company's own data shows iPhone 6 and iPhone 6 Plus sales numbers for the third week of March as 65,018, while sales for both handsets in the second week of April were just 35,003. That's almost a 50 percent drop in three weeks.
It appears as if building hype and anticipation for the Samsung smartphones may have actually caused the more significant drop to occur several weeks prior to launch, with potential iPhone customers holding off on smartphone purchases until the S6 and S6 Edge were released, or preordering the new Samsung devices instead of purchasing an iPhone. By the actual launch week, the steepest drop-off had already occurred, making it seem as if the week to week sales decline for iPhones was minimal.
