What is the life of Apple devices which are known for their better build quality and durability? An analyst has calculated the lifespan of Apple devices and according to him, it is four years and three months.
Horace Dediu, in his blog, takes account of all the active and total number sold devices to arrive at the lifespan.
“The cumulative retired devices can be calculated as 2.05 billion cumulative sold minus 1.3 billion active or 750 million. The time when cumulative devices sold reached 750 million was the third quarter 2013. The lifespan is thus estimated at the time between now and Q3 2013 or 17 quarters or about 4 years and three months,” he writes.
The number he arrives at is a theoretical estimate and hence, practically, your Apple device can have a lifespan of more than four years and three months or less than that. The calculated time, however, gives a fair idea about the average lifespan of the device.
Note that the second graph shows how the lifespan evolved over time. Also that, cumulative devices include Macs, iPhones, iPads, Apple Watches and iPod touch; not Apple TV or AirPods. Source: Asymco
Apple CEO Tim Cook in his fourth-quarter investor conference revealed the number of active devices, only the second time in the history of the company. He said that the total number of monthly active devices stands at 1.3 billion, 300 million more than the number provided in January 2016 when it was pegged at 1 billion.
In a related but separate blog post, Dediu also formulated a model for estimating the number of active Apple devices at any point in time. In conclusion, he found that the ratio between purchases and active devices remains remarkably constant, at around 64 percent.
“It’s so constant that perhaps we can invent a rule of thumb which says that two out of every three devices ever sold by Apple are still in use. And that this rule is always true,” he wrote.
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