Apple iPhone Storage Upgrades Stable, so It Relies on Pricing and Model Lineup
Apple just delivered superb financial results based in large part on consumer reception of the new iPhone 17 models. We showed that by simplifying the model lineup, Apple prompted more buyers to move to the more expensive Pro and Pro Max models. Along with that model migration, the Pro and Pro Max models had higher base prices than in previous years.
The other component in iPhone economics is storage upgrades. Even with recent increases in the cost of memory chips, Apple makes considerable margin when customers choose upgrade over base-level storage on their new iPhone. For all iPhone 17 models, the current base storage is 256 GB, up from 128 GB in recent years, with upgrades available up to 1 TB (or 2 TB for iPhone 17 Pro Max, which already started at 256 GB). The base storage for the still-available iPhone 16 and 16 Plus, and the almost year-old, entry-priced iPhone 16e remains 128 GB.
We track the storage capacity that a survey subject selected when they bought their new iPhone. We expect Apple worries that higher base-storage levels on the newest, most popular models may give buyers less incentive to pay for upgraded storage. As it turns out, in the December 2025 Apple customers upgraded at about the same rate as in the previous two December quarters. In the December 2025 quarter, 46% of all iPhone buyers upgraded from base storage (Chart 1).