Among iPhone Launches, the SE is indeed small edition – but it's bringing new consumers to iPhone

Slice Intelligence just revealed the first online sales figures for the iPhone SE, which confirm that while fewer people rushed online to get the latest iPhone than they did for the most recent launches, those who did were more likely to be new to the iPhone.

The number of iPhone SEs bought the first weekend of availability was 94 percent smaller than the iPhone 6S launch, which was 46 percent the number of iPhone 6 devices sold when it was released.

Early data from Slice Intelligence indicates that the SE may help Apple grow its maturing iPhone consumer base. Only 35 percent of iPhone SE buyers purchased an iPhone online in the past two years, and 16 percent of them were previously Android users. By comparison, 49 percent of iPhone 6S buyers upgraded from a previous iPhone, and 10 percent replaced an Android device they bought online within the past two years.

Buyers of the SE look much different than the Apple fanboy audience typically queuing up to buy the latest from Cupertino. They're older, less educated, and surprisingly, more male. More than one fifth of SE buyers are in the 45-54 age demographic, versus 18 percent for all iPhone buyers; and 77 percent of SE buyers are men, versus 69 percent.

Data on SE owners’ education offers a further indication that the SE is bringing a new audience to iPhone. Only 39 percent of new SE owners have a college degree, whereas 46 percent of those who pre-ordered an iPhone 6 or 6S did. And while education and income typically correlate closely, there were not sizable differences in income between SE buyers and those of other iPhones, though iPhone SE buyers under-index somewhat among the highest wage earners.

With a panel of over 4 million online shoppers, Slice Intelligence gives the most detailed, and accurate digital commerce data available, and is reported daily.

Slice Intelligence is the only service to measure digital commerce directly from the consumer, across all retailers, at the item level, and over time. Our retailer-independent methodology precisely measures commerce as it happens. By extracting detailed information from hundreds of millions of aggregated and anonymized e-receipts, Slice can map the entire Purchase Graph, connecting each and every consumer to all their purchases.

Slice gets its data from e-receipts – not a browser, app or software installed by the end-user – so its measurement reflects comprehensive shopping behavior across multiple devices, over time which are key in an increasingly omnichannel retail world.