Getty/Carl Court iPhone owners may not have upgraded because the iPhone X was too expensive.
- Apple is reportedly working on three new iPhone X models for release in 2018.
- There'll be an upgraded flagship to succeed the iPhone X, one larger iPhone X, and a third phone that's more affordable.
- The details aren't official - but it looks like this will be Apple's most concerted effort yet to persuade a broad base of consumers to upgrade from their old iPhones.
- According to a survey from analysts at Piper Jaffray, creating a new family of iPhone X devices may solve two major complaints with the original iPhone X - it was too expensive, and the screen was too small.
Apple is hoping everyone who didn't upgrade to the iPhone X this year will change their minds by autumn.
The company is, according to Bloomberg, working on three new iPhones for release later this year. One will be Apple's biggest iPhone ever, and likely to be its most expensive. Think of that like an iPhone X Plus. A second will be the same size as the current iPhone X. A third will be a cheaper model that still has some of the flagship's features.
It's unusual for Apple to release such a range of devices in one go. It's also avoided making jumbo phones, with even the bigger iPhone 8 Plus coming in smaller than rivals like the Huawei Mate 10 Pro and Google Pixel 2.
Bloomberg reported that the internal thinking at Apple is to appeal to people who like jumbo phones - an area dominated by Apple's rivals - and those who didn't want to fork out for the £1,000 / $1,000 iPhone X. Apple touted the iPhone X as its biggest smartphone innovation in years, but it isn't selling well.
A survey of 1,500 iPhone owners conducted by analysts at Piper Jaffray suggests there's demand for a bigger range of new phones. And that should give Apple bulls some hope.
"Our survey of 1,500 iPhone users shows that [around] 40% have not upgraded to iPhone X because they either feel the device is too expensive (31%) or they prefer a larger screen (8%)," analysts Michael J. Olson and Yung Kim wrote.
Something the analysts didn't pull out but which is equally significant: 44% of those who didn't upgrade chose not to because their iPhone "works just fine."
The analysts wrote that the new batch of rumoured iPhones will probably address the two major complaints: that the iPhone X was too expensive, and that it wasn't big enough.
They predicted that Apple would sell more iPhones in 2019 than previously anticipated.
"[We] are increasingly confident in our [full year 2019] iPhone estimate of 233.8 million which is [around] 3 million above consensus [of] 227 million," they wrote.
Business Insider/Piper Jaffray
Piper Jaffray's iPhone sales predictions
Piper Jaffray recently predicted a "super long cycle," where Apple sees long-term benefit in rolling out iPhone X features like facial recognition to the rest of its lineup.