Nowadays, flagship phones have storage options that top out at a full terabyte, which is pretty insane. Larger storage options are more enticing to prospective buyers, but it seems that they’re not that compelling. A new report found that the number of iPhone users who buy storage upgrades is decreasing.
When you look at how much money it costs Apple to produce its iPhone models, you’ll find that it doesn’t cost Apple much to install a 256GB storage chip compared to a 128GB chip. Be that as it may, you’re likely to pay $100 more for that upgrade. Buying an iPhone 16 Pro with 1TB of storage will cost you $500 more than a model with just 256GB.
So, upping the storage in its iPhones is a major source of cash for Apple. It makes sense that Apple hopes for you to choose higher storage options. But that’s happening less and less, apparently.
Fewer iPhone users want to buy storage upgrades
Michael Levin and Josh Lowitz from CIRP (Consumer Intelligence Research Partners LLC) released a report on how many iPhone users chose non-base storage options in Q3 2024 compared to the same quarter in 2023. The chart below will show the results.
The data is split up into three groups. The latest iPhone SE, iPhone 14, and iPhone 15 occupy one group, known as the “Legacy group”. These are phones that would have been a generation behind at the time of purchase. Next, the base iPhone 15, iPhone 15+, iPhone 16, and iPhone 16+ occupy the second group. Lastly, the Pro and Pro Max versions of the iPhone 15 and iPhone 16 take the last group. Each bar represents how much the user base chose non-base storage configurations.
Looking at the chart (let’s ignore the first group for the moment), we see that 48% of people buying 2023’s newest iPhone (iPhone 15/15+) upgraded their storage in Q4 2023. However, only 42% of people buying 2024’s newest iPhone (iPhone 16/16+) upgraded their storage.
We see a similar trend with the Pro and Pro Max versions of these phones. In Q4 2023, 48% of users purchased storage upgrades, but that number dropped to 44% in Q4 2024. It seems that more people are happy buying the base storage iPhone 15 and iPhone 16 than the year before.
It might seem that more people are satisfied with 128GB of storage (256GB for the Pro and Pro Max phones). However, one reason could be the rising prices of tech… and everything else in the world. More people are probably content with spending less money for a lower storage configuration.
What about the first group?
The report also highlighted another bit of information. We see the opposite trend with the Legacy phones. In Q4 2023, 38% of people chose storage upgrades, but that number shot up to 48% in Q4 2024.
That’s a bit odd, but prices for these older phones were lower. This means that people could buy storage upgrades for less money, so it would make sense for this number to be higher.
