iPhone Users Keep Their Phones For Longer Than Android Users For This Simple Reason

How long do you keep your phones? Would you use an iPhone for longer than an Android phone? You might not have the answer to these questions right away, but you can’t deny the software support the longevity iPhones have. Plus, with their consistent design across generations and less instances to upgrade, it’s no surprise that iPhone users often hold onto their devices longer compared to Android users. 

Now, a new report by by Consumer Research Partners pays heed to this fact, and states that an average iPhone user upgrades less frequently to new models compared to Android counterparts, and this leads to “a smaller share of quarterly and annual smartphone sales." The report claims that 61% of iPhone buyers kept their previous iPhone for two years or more, compared to 43% of Android owners. Further, 29% of iPhone owners kept their previous iPhone for three years or more than Android owners at 21%.

“Many fewer iPhone owners (10%) owned their previous iPhone for a year or less, compared to almost a quarter of Android owners," the report added.

Now, you would be interested to know why this happens. Firstly, unlike the popular belief that iPhone users are more likely to upgrade because they have more purchasing power compared to Android users—which mostly consist of the budget to mid-range market, but this isn’t why it happens; instead, it is because due to the affordable nature of most Android phones, customers are more likely to “retire" a phone and buy a new model.

Additionally, Apple iPhones are released once a year (with the exception of iPhone SE model releases and new colorways), compared to the myriad models that Android OEMs, including Samsung, OnePlus, Oppo, Sony, and Google itself, launch. So, there’s only one catalyst for iPhone users to switch to a new phone, compared to multiple for Android users.

With that said, flagship Android phones nowadays offer as good of a build quality as iPhones, if not better, and come with software support that surpasses it. The Google Pixel 8 series, which was released earlier this month, comes with a promise of 7 OS updates—which is definitely more than what Apple offers or what other Android OEMs do. So, we may see this trend gradually fading away, at least with flagship Android phones.