Reports last week suggested that people might finally be tired of Apple’s iPhone, citing sources that said sales were weaker than expected. But the latest numbers do not support that conclusion.
On Tuesday, Verizon Communications said in its quarterly earnings report that the iPhone was its top-selling smartphone. It sold 9.8 million smartphones over the past quarter, 6.2 million of which were iPhones. Nearly half of the iPhone sales were of iPhone 5s, Verizon said.
AT&T, the second-biggest American carrier after Verizon, will report its earnings Thursday, but it has already said that its iPhone sales were strong. In a preliminary report issued this month, it said its fourth quarter brought in its “best-ever quarterly sales of Android and Appl smartphones.â€
Corroborating healthy iPhone sales, Kantar Worldpanel Comtech, a research company, said that the iPhone was the top-selling smartphone in the United States over the fourth quarter. It estimated that the iPhone accounted for 51.2 percent of smartphone sales in the United States over the quarter; sales of Android phones in that time period remained flat with about 44 percent of the market.
These numbers come contrary to a report last week from The Wall Street Journal, which said that Apple had cut orders of parts for the iPhone 5 from its manufacturers because of weaker-than-expected demand. However, some analysts said Apple might ! have cut down on orders for parts because it placed a large order last quarter to keep up with high demand, leaving some inventory left over for the coming quarter.
Chetan Sharma, an independent mobile analyst, said in an interview that he did not find the reports about weak iPhone demand to be credible.
“The iPhone is seeing significant competition from Samsung, but that doesn’t mean the demand for iPhone was waning,†Mr. Sharma said. “It just means there’s more pressure to produce a better iPhone next time around.â€
