iPhone house owners hit 87% loyalty charge this 12 months, Android-to-iPhone switching drops to 12%

Connecting the dots: Apple and Google have lengthy urged smartphone customers to defect from their rival’s platform, going as far as to publish apps on one another’s storefronts to easy the method. But a current survey suggests there may be little motion between customers of the 2 cell working techniques.

In line with the most recent survey by analysts at Client Intelligence Analysis Companions (CIRP), the share of iPhone house owners who upgraded from one other iPhone, versus these switching over from Android, rose this 12 months. The figures recommend Apple customers are not less than glad sufficient to stay with iOS, whereas a good variety of Android customers are nonetheless crossing over to iPhones.

CIRP periodically surveys prospects who purchase new telephones, asking what sort of telephone they owned beforehand. Within the quarter ending March 2026, 12% of respondents who purchased a brand new iPhone stated they’d switched from an Android system, in comparison with 14% a 12 months earlier and 13% in 2024.

Only one% upgraded from a characteristic telephone or a smartphone working one other working system this 12 months, down from 2% in every of the earlier two years. That leaves the share of iPhone patrons who upgraded from one other iPhone at 87%, up from 84% final 12 months and 85% the 12 months earlier than. The figures recommend that almost all smartphone customers have already settled on a most popular platform.

Whereas CIRP doesn’t monitor what number of iPhone customers are shifting to Android, a related survey revealed earlier this 12 months by SellCell discovered a fair greater loyalty charge for Apple within the US. Amongst greater than 5,000 smartphone customers, the share planning to stay with the iPhone climbed from 90.5% in 2019 to 96.4% in 2026. Android loyalty, in contrast, sat at 86.4% this 12 months, and Android customers have been about 4 instances as prone to swap to iOS.

The explanations behind Apple’s edge are unclear. The corporate’s current transfer to help RCS messaging, which lets Android and iPhone customers trade texts with end-to-end encryption and different superior options, seems to have had little impact on model loyalty.

Android’s comparatively open platform, which lets customers sideload apps, stays one in all its most vital benefits over iOS. However Google is making ready to limit that performance, a shift that would boring its worth proposition for some prospects.

Generative AI is one other space the place the competing smartphone platforms diverge considerably.

Google has been faster to weave its Gemini assistant into Android, with options resembling auto-scheduling, type auto-completion, dictation, and computerized internet looking. Apple is ready to carry comparable capabilities, together with visible descriptions, AI internet searches, and doc drafting, to Siri in iOS 27 this fall.