While a recent report has revealed that US iPhone users have been putting off replacing their handsets for slightly longer, this should not prevent Apple scoring “explosive” growth in iPhone sales in the 2017 and 2018 fiscal years, The Motley Fool analyst Adam Levine-Weinberg has opined today.
Earlier this week, having gathered data on how often US iPhone users replaced their devices, Consumer Intelligence Research Partners estimated that, during the last three years, the average lifetime of a US iPhone before being replaced has lengthened by roughly three months.
However, Levine-Weinberg has insisted that this three-month rise represents “a slow trend, not a radical shift”. He added that, with Apple CEO Tim Cook having recently revealed that the last two years has seen the global iPhone user base grow by 80%, this rapid increase would, “all else equal”, result in an 80% rise in iPhone replacements. The slower update rate would only “somewhat” reduce this figure.
Levine-Weinberg thus calculates that the volume of iPhones replaced in the 2017 fiscal year will “quite likely” exceed the previous record set in 2015. Furthermore, should Apple – as is expected – enact “some big improvements” for the 2017 iPhone, fiscal 2018 should see another jump in upgrades.
The analyst has also pointed out that the iPhone continues to attract many new users, with the number of switchers from Android currently at a “record high”. Levine-Weinberg cites this as further support for the continued growth of the iPhone user base.