Older iPhones Cutting Into Apple Inc. (AAPL) iPhone 5 Sales

Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL) will report its first quarter financials in late January, and obviously, iPhone 5 sales will be important. Now it can be said with near-absolute certainty that every analyst under the sun is expecting the iPad Mini to cannibalize the company’s larger tablet models to an extent, but some may have not expected that older “legacy” iPhones would cut into sales of the iPhone 5.

As originally reported by AllThingsD earlier today, a research report from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners shows that “by some metrics, the iPhone 5 underperformed compared to its predecessor, the iPhone 4S.” More specifically, “the iPhone 5 accounted for 68 percent of total iPhone sales during its first month at market — significantly less than the iPhone 4S, which accounted for 90 percent of all iPhone sales during its first month of retail availability.”

In October 2011 after Apple Inc. (NASDAQ:AAPL)’s iPhone 4S launched, just 7% of smartphone sales were derived from the previous version (iPhone 4), while the remaining 3% was attributed to sales of the iPhone 3GS. This time around, however, the immediate predecessor iPhone 4S is still snatching up 23% of sales, and the iPhone 4 (remarkably) still accounts for 9% of Apple’s smartphone revenue.