Despite all odds, iPhone 15 Pro Max was the best-selling phone in Q1 2024

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Despite all odds, iPhone 15 Pro Max was the best-selling phone in Q1 2024
With almost every other report painting a gloomy landscape for iPhone 15 sales and talking about the success of the Galaxy S24 family, you'd think more people bought Samsung's flagships than Apple's premium handsets. That isn't the case, according to a new report from Counterpoint Research.

Despite being months old in Q1, the iPhone 15 Pro Max beat out every other handset to be the number one selling smartphone in the first quarter of 2024.

That's notable for several reasons. This is the quarter when the Galaxy S24 was released but despite that, it sat at the fifth spot on the list. It was also the first non-seasonal quarter for Apple when a Pro Max model won the top spot.



The iPhone 15 and the iPhone 15 Pro were the next top favorite phones, followed by last year's iPhone 14. The fifth iPhone on the top 10 list was the iPhone 15 Plus, which was the eighth-most popular phone during Q1. The rest of the spots were taken by Samsung phones. This was the first quarter when all the top-selling phones were 5G-ready. 

People seem to be overwhelmingly preferring premium phones, with 7 out of the 10 phones on the list having a retail price of more than $600. This is also evident in the iPhone sale breakdown, with the Pro models accounting for half of the sales in Q1 2024, a sharp increase compared to 24 percent in Q1 2020.

Apple has increasingly started creating more differentiation between the Pro and standard models and the strategy is working, with the Pro phones accounting for 60 percent of revenue in Q1 2024. The iPhone 15 Pro Max was the most popular model despite the fact that it was more expensive than the previous-gen model, indicating people are ready to pay up for extra features.

Another reason why people seem to be more open to the idea of buying pricey phones is because the smartphone replacement cycle has lengthened, so consumers want phones that are future-proof.

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