The iPhone 7 is sounding like it will be one of Apple’s least dramatic “full number” iPhone upgrades in years, and according to polling data, it’s not exactly going to be a “must have” item.
In a new survey by Quartz, just 10 percent of respondents said they’d be looking to upgrade their iPhone this year if Apple doesn’t redesign the handset — classing themselves as either “likely” or “very likely” to upgrade if Apple doesn’t upgrade the overall appearance of its next-gen smartphone.
That number compared to 45.9 percent who would be “not at all likely” to upgrade in this instance, or 33.3 percent who would be “not so likely.” The remaining 11.4 percent said they were “somewhat likely” to do so.
On top of this, 70 percent said they would increase the amount of time between iPhone upgrades if Apple moves to a three-year major iPhone refresh cycle rather than upgrading the look of its handsets every other year.
Polls, of course, are far from infallible, and this one was carried out with a relatively small data set of 525 iPhone users in the United States. Extrapolating global smartphone trends from this poll isn’t exactly bulletproof science.
Provided that the rumors about the iPhone 7 are true, however, it is surprising to see that Apple would choose the first year with declining iPhone sales to debut one of its most incremental improvements in history. Granted, the idea of an improved iPhone 6s with a better camera sounds pretty great from my perspective, but it’s sounding a long way from next year’s massive refresh — rumored to be so big that Apple might skip the iPhone 7s name completely and jump straight to iPhone 8.
Will you be buying the iPhone 7 if it isn’t a massive iPhone 6-style refresh, but rather a subtle “s”-type upgrade? Leave your comments below.
Source: Quartz
