Financed iPhone & Used Phone Figures (2026)

This page gathers public figures on how people in the United States buy iPhones, what happens to phones they stop using, the used-phone market, resale value, and stolen-device checks, and every figure links to the source that published it.

Words such as “about,” “roughly,” and “around” are the source’s, not a rewrite. iTradeCell did not produce these third-party figures.

Key figures

In a survey of 5,022 U.S. adults conducted from February 5 to June 18, 2025, 91% said they owned a smartphone. (Pew Research Center, 2025)
Carrier stores dominate U.S. iPhone sales. Apple’s own stores and website accounted for 16% of iPhones sold in the United States in the twelve months ended December 2025. (CIRP, 2026)
U.S. consumers received more than $6.4 billion in value through mobile trade-in programs in 2025, 42% more than in 2024. (Assurant, 2026)
In the March 2026 quarter, 39% of U.S. iPhone buyers had kept their previous iPhone for three years or more, and about one-third had kept it for two years or less. (CIRP, 2026)
In a survey of 4,000 U.S. consumers, 41% stored an unused electronic device instead of getting rid of it. (Saeedi, Cade, Oh, Watson, and Williams, COMPASS, 2025)
Apple’s share of global refurbished smartphone sales rose to 56% in 2024, from 51% in 2023. (Counterpoint Research, 2025)
Among mobile operators that report stolen phones into the GSMA Device Registry block list, the annual rate of reported device theft has stayed around 1% of active subscribers. That figure is global, not a U.S. count. (GSMA, 2025)
CIRP estimates that 9% of recent U.S. iPhone customers bought or otherwise received a used iPhone, and said that share had stayed fairly stable for a few years. (CIRP, 2025)

How Americans buy iPhones

Installment lengths below are Apple’s published U.S. checkout options, not a count of how many people use each plan.

In the same 2025 Pew survey, 98% of U.S. adults said they owned a cellphone of some kind. (Pew Research Center, 2025)

16% of U.S. adults were smartphone-only internet users in that survey: they owned a smartphone and did not subscribe to home broadband. (Pew Research Center, 2025)

Smartphone ownership in that survey was 97% among adults under 50 and 78% among adults 65 and older. (Pew Research Center, 2026)

IDC’s May 29, 2025 forecast put U.S. smartphone market growth at 1.9% for 2025, down from an earlier forecast of 3.3%. (IDC, 2025)

In that same forecast, IDC said a majority of devices in the U.S. smartphone market are bought through carriers, which offer trade-in deals and interest-free financing. (IDC, 2025)

On Apple’s U.S. iPhone payment page, carrier financing at Apple splits the price over 24 or 36 months at 0% APR, Apple Card Monthly Installments run 24 months at 0% APR, and Apple Upgrade is a lease with 12- or 24-month terms. (Apple, 2026)

CIRP says the base iPhone’s share of U.S. model sales fell from 54% around the iPhone 11 launch to 25% for the iPhone 17 in the twelve-month period covered by its September 9, 2026 note. (CIRP, 2026)

Unused phones and money left on the table

These surveys ask different questions, so the shares are not interchangeable.

46% of U.S. adults said they had removed at least one consumer-technology item from their home in the previous 12 months, in an online survey of 2,004 adults fielded May 12–26, 2026 (margin of sampling error ±2.2 percentage points). (Consumer Technology Association, 2026)

When CNET asked U.S. adults about their usual plan for tech they no longer use, 29% said they stash it at home. YouGov surveyed 2,638 adults online from April 10–14, 2026. (CNET / YouGov, 2026)

In that same CNET/YouGov survey, 24% said they trade old tech in with a retailer. (CNET / YouGov, 2026)

In that survey, 18% said they sell old gadgets online. (CNET / YouGov, 2026)

In that survey, 33% said they give old tech away. (CNET / YouGov, 2026)

In that survey, 39% said they recycle devices they no longer use. (CNET / YouGov, 2026)

In that survey, 22% said they throw old tech in the trash. (CNET / YouGov, 2026)

CIRP has reported that about half of U.S. iPhone buyers trade in or sell their previous iPhone. (CIRP, 2025)

The U.S. used and refurbished phone market

Some of the only public market totals are global. Each sentence uses one research firm. Figures from different firms are not combined.

Counterpoint Research said global refurbished smartphone sales grew 5% in 2024, while new smartphone sales grew 3%. (Counterpoint Research, 2025)

The same Counterpoint report said the global average selling price of a refurbished smartphone fell from $445 in 2023 to $394 in 2024. (Counterpoint Research, 2025)

Counterpoint said 5G phones were 42% of global refurbished smartphone sales in 2024, up from 28% in 2023. (Counterpoint Research, 2025)

IDC’s Quarterly Used Device Tracker forecast, published August 27, 2025, said global used-smartphone shipments would grow 3.2% in 2025, while new smartphone shipments would grow 1%. (IDC, 2025)

In that same IDC note, used-smartphone shipment growth was forecast at 5.8% in 2026, easing to 4.9% by 2029. (IDC, 2025)

IDC’s February 2026 used-smartphone forecast said average selling prices for used smartphones were 30% lower than prices for new smartphones. (IDC, 2026)

For the full year 2025, Assurant said the phones turned in most often were all premium 5G models, including iPhone 13 and iPhone 14 variants, and that the Galaxy S22 Ultra 5G was the most frequently turned-in Android phone. (Assurant, 2026)

Over a 36-month look at U.S. iPhone activations, CIRP said about three-quarters of people who activated a used iPhone had bought it at retail, and about one-quarter had received it from a friend or family member. (CIRP, 2025)

iPhone resale value and depreciation

CIRP’s U.S. weighted average retail price of new iPhones was $1,042 in the March 2026 quarter, compared with $971 in the March 2025 quarter. (CIRP, 2026)

The average age of iPhones turned in through trade-in and upgrade programs was 3.76 years in the fourth quarter of 2025, a slight decline from the prior reading, according to Assurant. (Assurant, 2026)

In that same quarter, Assurant said Android phones turned in through those programs were more than 4 years old on average. (Assurant, 2026)

SellCell’s comparison of mint-condition resale prices with launch prices said an iPhone 16 with 128GB of storage went from $799 to roughly $476 after 12 months, which it described as about 59.6% of the original price. (SellCell, 2026)

In that same comparison, SellCell said an iPhone 16e with 128GB of storage went from $599 to about $291 after 12 months, retaining roughly 48.6% of its launch price. (SellCell, 2026)

In the twelve months ending December 2024, 36% of U.S. iPhone buyers told CIRP their previous phone was two years old or newer, compared with 31% in the twelve months ending December 2023. (CIRP, 2025)

The U.S. CPI-U index for telephone hardware, calculators, and other consumer information items (series CUUR0000SEEE04, not seasonally adjusted) was 100.000 in December 2024 and 84.048 in August 2026. This series is not smartphones alone. (U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2026)

Stolen phones and device safety

In the COMPASS survey of 4,000 U.S. consumers, 59% had gotten rid of a device, and 31% of that group had not wiped the data first. (Saeedi, Cade, Oh, Watson, and Williams, COMPASS, 2025)

Among people in that survey who got rid of a device without wiping it, 44% said wiping was not important or had not occurred to them, 33% said the device was broken, 12% reported difficulty wiping it, and 11% said they could not find a way to wipe it. (Saeedi, Cade, Oh, Watson, and Williams, COMPASS, 2025)

Apple says Activation Lock is part of Find My, turns on automatically when Find My is on, and can still block someone else from reactivating an iPhone after a remote erase. (Apple Support, 2026)

Apple’s stolen-iPhone instructions say not to remove the phone from Find My, because removing it also removes Activation Lock and makes the phone easier to erase and resell. (Apple Support, 2026)

The GSMA Device Registry keeps a shared block list of IMEI numbers for phones reported lost or stolen, so participating mobile operators can refuse those phones on their networks. (GSMA, 2026)

iTradeCell’s own data

These lines will be filled from iTradeCell transactions. They are not estimates from the sources above.