David Smith, developer of the widely-used Widgetsmith, on Mastodon:
The eve of iPhone 18 Pro pre-orders seems a good time to look back at the iPhone 17 family’s adoption. Here’s the 17 family data as a percentage of overall usage for Widgetsmith.
Generally they followed the usual adoption pattern, and overall did very well ending at around 20% of total usage.
With the exception of the Air really struggling to find market share. For comparison the 16 Plus ended its first year at around 1.4% (vs the Air’s 0.3%).
The chart looks rough for the iPhone Air. Amongst all Widgetsmith users, here’s the share as of September by model:
iPhone 17 7.2%
iPhone 17 Pro Max 5.9%
iPhone 17 Pro 5.8%
iPhone 17e 0.5%
iPhone Air 0.3%
But if we only consider the 19.7 percent of Widgetsmith users using one of these new 17-generation iPhones, the percentages look like this:
iPhone 17 36.5%
iPhone 17 Pro Max 29.9%
iPhone 17 Pro 29.4%
iPhone 17e 2.5%
iPhone Air 1.5%
In the entire year since the iPhone Air was announced, I’ve never seen Apple advertise it. No billboards, no commercials. It raises a chicken/egg question: did no one buy it because Apple didn’t market it, or did Apple not market it because no one wanted it?
It’s a shame, because I truly believe not only that it’s the nicest iPhone Apple has ever made, but that if most people tried it, they’d love it. They don’t need a bigger battery and, wouldn’t take better photos with a Pro model, and would love the thin feel and low weight. But the shame of these low iPhone Air sales reminds me, very much, of the late great iPhone 12 and 13 Mini — also a truly great design, also terribly disappointing sales numbers.
If the iPhone Air 2 rumored to be coming in the spring doesn’t turn things around, it might follow the Mini as a twice-and-done design.
That said, the 17e seemingly isn’t setting the world on fire either. That’s a bit surprising to me. (Maybe the sort of people who buy the “e” models (and the SE models before them aren’t the demographic for an app like Widgetsmith.)
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