Will 300 Million People Upgrade iPhones?

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Nov 4, 7:10AM EST

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There are several reasons people might upgrade to the latest iPhone.
One Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) analyst predicts a “monster holiday season” for the company.
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There are several reasons people might upgrade to the Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL) iPhone 16. One is the iOS 18.1 software. It has the Apple Intelligence package, Apple’s flagship artificial intelligence (AI) software product. However, this works on some iPhone 15 models. The iPhone 16 has an upgraded camera, which every generation of the phone has. It has a faster chip, which is not helpful for people who use relatively few functions. The trigger for tens of millions of upgrades is that 300 million people have an iPhone that has not been upgraded in over four years.

Wedbush analyst Dan Ives says the 300 million older iPhones means “a monster holiday season (is) likely on deck.” His argument is a theory but a believable one.

Apple needs good fourth-quarter revenue, particularly from its smartphone, to keep its stock rising. Its shares are up only 16% this year, compared to 21% for the S&P 500, and are poor compared to stocks of other massive tech companies. Meta Platforms Inc. (NASDAQ: META), for example, is up 60% for the period.

Apple’s iPhone figures for the most recently reported quarter were mediocre. Apple’s overall revenue rose 6% to $94.9 billion. iPhone revenue also rose modestly from $43.8 billion to $46.2 billion. The quarter would have been weak if the Services revenue had not jumped from $22.3 billion to $25.0 billion.

People may upgrade to the iPhone 16 because of new AI features. However, people who have versions older than four years own an iPhone 12 or an older version. An upgrade in features since that model’s release would be a smartphone with much more advanced technology.

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.