iPhone Retirements Coming in at Slightly Younger Ages

iPhone Retirements Coming in at Slightly Younger Ages

An ongoing question among iPhone followers and analysts is, how long do iPhone owners keep their phones? That can’t be known for certain until some point in the future, so we focus on recent past experience to help predict that future. Periodically we update these figures and now can share the latest data through the December 2024 quarter.

Over the long-term, iPhone buyers have kept their phones for a longer time. Except for the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, the holding period steadily increased since 2014, when CIRP began tracking this data.

In the most recent quarter, we saw a slight change to that trend. There were more iPhone buyers retiring “younger” phones compared to earlier quarters. Specifically, 36% of iPhone buyers in the December 2024 quarter reported having their previous phone for two years or less, compared to 31% in the December 2023 quarter (Chart 1).

Chart 1: Length of time iPhone buyers had previous phone (December quarter of each year)

Conversely, slightly fewer buyers had a phone for three years or more (33%) or for two to three years (30%) compared to 2023. The shift from 2023 to 2024 was divided evenly between these two categories. Now, the ownership pattern for a previous phone almost exactly matches that in 2020.

What accounts for the recent shift? A range of factors may help explain it, including ongoing deals from carriers and continuing incentives to upgrade a previous phone around two years after it was purchased, even for those with longer installment purchase agreements.

The weakness in Apple’s recent sales results may suggest a shift in who has bought new phones lately, too. If iPhone sales are slowing, the active iPhone buyers are likely the most dedicated iPhone owners, and presumably they are more likely to upgrade more quickly. The slower upgraders may be sitting on their hands - and their old iPhones - even longer. At some point the currently happy owners of older iPhones will finally need to upgrade or will be persuaded by a must-have feature improvement or purchase offer, and then we expect the average age of retiring iPhones to begin to increase once again.