The number of iPhone batteries Apple replaced in 2018 was over 5 times higher than expected

Apple is not exactly at the top of its game right now with sales of its latest iPhones not hitting the targets set by the company. As we heard from Apple CEO Tim Cook himself, one of the reasons for those unexpected results is the battery replacement program that the company started early 2018.

Apple was pressured to begin the program after it was discovered it throttled older iPhones once their batteries degraded to a certain level. During the promotion period that ended December 31, 2018, customers could get a battery change for their iPhone 6 or later models for a heavily reduced price.

If you, like us, were wondering how many batteries must have been changed to affect the revenue stream of a company as big as Apple, then you’d be happy to hear that we now have an answer. Coming from the DaringFireball blog via AppleInsider is the information that around 11 million users opted for a cheap battery replacement during 2018.

According to the source, Apple’s estimate for that number was in the ballpark of 1-2 million, which is obviously a huge difference between expectations and reality. Of course, we can’t assume that all those extra 9 million people would have gotten new iPhones if it wasn’t for the program. But we can allow ourselves some quick speculation. If even just a third of them had bought a new iPhone instead, with an average price of around $800, that’s a hefty $2.4 billion that Apple lost in revenue.

Since Apple releases its phones towards the end of the year, it wasn’t clear how much the replacement program will affect sales of the new models until the numbers started coming in. And when they did, the surprise wasn’t pleasant.