iPhones Keep Getting Older

It’s the time of year when iPhone owners start to think about replacing their old phones. Apple announced its new iPhone 15 lineup a couple of weeks ago, and the new phones became available for purchase and delivery in the past few days. It’s a good time to look at how old the old phones really are.

We’ve noted the trend towards iPhone owners holding on to their phones for a longer time. In the past five years, we’ve seen the percentage of iPhone buyers that upgraded from an iPhone they have owned for three years or more increase from about one-quarter in 2019 to about one-third in 2023 (Chart 1).