Younger Customers Are Addicted to iPhone Upgrades

Lately we’ve thought about differences between younger and older Apple customers. Last week, we found perhaps younger customers aren’t quite as addicted to their gadgets as we might have predicted.

While younger customers seemingly can wait to repair or replace a broken or lost iPhone for longer than we expected, they are not waiting to upgrade to the latest models. Despite the cost and the relatively longer useful life of an iPhone, the younger iPhone owners move to more current models more quickly than their older counterparts.

Here, we look at a simple analysis, the age of old iPhones at retirement segmented by the age of the customer. We analyzed customers that purchased a new iPhone in the twelve months ending in December 2022, and looked at the age of the iPhone they had before their newly-purchased model.

The differences between the youngest and oldest consumers are stark. 45% of consumers in the 18-24 year-old range had their previous phone less than two years, about three times the percentage of 65+ year old consumers. 65% of those consumers in the 65 years old or more group had their previous phone for three years or more, about two-and-a-half times the percentage for the 18-24 year old group (Chart 1).