Although Apple's iPhone 6 Plus remains in short supply, its portion of total iPhone 6 and 6 Plus sales has increased over the last two weeks, according to analysis of usage-tracking data.
Mobile metrics firms Mixpanel and Fiksu, which monitor the activity of iPhone owners via the analytics embedded in clients' apps, have both noted an improvement in the ratio of the iPhone 6 Plus to iPhone 6 smartphones.
As of Sunday, for example, Mixpanel pegged the iPhone 6 at 6.02% of all iPhones, with the iPhone 6 Plus representing 1.34%. The ratio -- 4.5:1, or 4.5 iPhone 6 handsets for every one iPhone 6 Plus -- was an improvement for the iPhone 6 Plus from the 6.8:1 of two weeks prior.
Fiksu, another mobile app metrics provider, recorded a similar trend.
On Sunday, Fiksu's ratio was 3.9:1 in favor of the iPhone 6, a stronger showing for the iPhone 6 Plus than two weeks before, when the ratio was 6.5:1.
In other words, about 18% to 20% of all iPhone 6 smartphones monitored by Mixpanel and Fiksu were iPhone 6 Pluses.
Apple still shows a delay between ordering and shipping for both models, but the lag for the iPhone 6 Plus -- at "3-4 weeks" on its e-store -- remained substantially longer than the iPhone 6 ("7-10 business days") by a large margin.
But the increasing share of the iPhone 6 Plus in the usage data indicates that, even though it is harder to find than its smaller sibling, customers are acquiring it in larger numbers. That, in turn, hints that sales -- or at least usage -- of the iPhone 6 Plus are increasing faster than for the iPhone 6.
Most analysts expect the iPhone 6 Plus's share to jump even more once the 5.5-in. smartphone goes on sale in the People's Republic of China (PRC) on Oct. 17. Customers in mainland China can pre-order the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus from Apple's online store starting Friday, Oct. 10.
While the iPhone 6 Plus is out of stock on Apple's online market, some of the Cupertino, Calif. company's brick-and-mortar stores have devices to sell, according to iStockNow.com, a website that tracks iPhone retail availability.
As of early Monday, iStockNow showed iPhone 6 Plus smartphones available at approximately 30 Apple stores in the U.S. and Canada, although some of those stores had only one or two models and most had phones for just one or two carriers. One of the Apple stores in the St. Louis area, for instance, had only the 16GB iPhone 6 Plus in silver and for use on Verizon's network.
iStockNow also lets users set up email notifications when a preferred iPhone 6 or 6 Plus model, color and carrier becomes available in a local store.
