The relationship between iPhone battery replacements and sales


Tim Cook Wednesday addressed significantly weakening of iPhone sales. A number of reasons were cited, and one was specific to iPhone battery replacements.

While macroeconomic challenges in some markets were a key contributor to this trend, we believe there are other factors broadly impacting our iPhone performance, including consumers adapting to a world with fewer carrier subsidies, US dollar strength-related price increases, and some customers taking advantage of significantly reduced pricing for iPhone battery replacements.

I'm assuming this is referencing the iPhone 6 battery replacement program, which ended 12/31/17. I don't think there have been any other significant price reductions for battery service/repair.

This seems an interesting insight into Apple's thinking around repair services. Apple gets accused of planned obsolescence around the handling of battery performance. Apple has been configuring iOS to reduce performance as batteries degrade with age. On its face, this doesn't seem unreasonable. I've seen devices go crazy with a failing battery, so mitigating that with software seems like a reasonable approach.

If customers are confronted with either degraded performance or a repair, this note, however, indicates Apple sees battery replacements as a barrier to upgrade sales. This seems like a motivation for Apple to set higher prices on repairs and hobble devices with software. On top of this, there's the whole right to repair movement that accuses device makers like Apple of intentionally designing devices unnecessarily difficult to repair.

I'd prefer if Apple had a more customer-centric solution of fair repair services rather than a scheme to drive sales. To me, this citation in Cook's letter suggests the later and is not a good look for Apple.