iPhone 16 pre-order sales have a surprising big winner — and a very big loser

Now that the dust has settled on the iPhone 16 pre-orders , analysts are looking at which models are shipping well and which aren't. It turns out that the usual suspects aren't doing as well as expected.

Apple industry analyst Ming-Chi Kuo dug into the sales data regarding the iPhone 16 models and found that the iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max sold less than last year's models. On the other hand, the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus sold more than the iPhone 15 devices.

Kuo looked at a "supply chain survey" and ship dates from Apple's website to approximate how well each iPhone 16 model sold during their first few days on the market.

Based on the data, here's what Kuo found regarding iPhone 16 sales:

• iPhone 16 Pro Max is down 16% compared to last year
• iPhone 16 Pro is down 27% compared to last year
• iPhone 16 Plus is up 48% compared to last year
• iPhone 16 is up 10% compared to last year

If the data is correct, the iPhone 16 Plus is the big winner for 2024. A 48% year-over-year increase is massive and shows that people want a larger phone, but aren't necessarily interested in the extra features offered by the Pro Max.

This tracks with what Jason England had to say about this years phone — concluding that with the many shared features, iPhone 16 just made the iPhone 16 Pro look pointless .

Speaking of the Pro Max, it was down 16% compared to 2023's opening iPhone weekend. The base Pro was also down a staggering 27% — making it the biggest iPhone 16 release window loser, though that may not be enough to stop it from being one of the best phones once we get a chance to review it.

According to Kuo, all of the iPhone 16 models sold worse than the iPhone 15. Apple moved around 37 million units, down around 12.7% from the iPhone 15 lineup on the first weekend. Kuo noted that while the demand for the iPhone 16 Plus grew substantially, it wasn't enough to outweigh the poor performance of the Pro models.

Another interesting note from Kuo's report is that Apple had far more iPhone 16 Pro Max models ready for launch than iPhone 15 Pro Max phones. With higher yields on the tetraprism camera , the company had 106% more devices prepared for launch day.

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