iPhone Loyalty Rate Climbs to 87% as Switching to Android Slows

iPhone owners are sticking with the platform at a higher rate than a year ago, with new research firm CIRP putting iPhone loyalty at 87% for the first quarter of 2026. CIRP's latest quarterly survey found that just 12% of new iPhone buyers in the March quarter had come over from an Android phone, with the remaining 1% arriving from a feature phone, a different smartphone platform, or buying a smartphone for the first time. That puts loyalty three percentage points above the same quarter a year earlier, when 14% of buyers switched from Android and the overall loyalty figure sat at 84%. The firm has been tracking this movement for years by asking iPhone buyers what device they owned right before their purchase, among other questions about how they shop. Across the periods it measured recently, the share of buyers coming from Android has held in a fairly narrow 11% to 15% band, a much smaller pool of switchers than in the iPhone's early years, when Apple was still expanding beyond AT&T to other U.S. carriers and picking up large numbers of new users in the process. The trend held steady in early 2024 too, when 13% of buyers arrived from Android and loyalty came in at 85%. CIRP's numbers suggest the bulk of smartphone owners settled on a platform long ago, and only a small slice change sides each year. This is a pattern other recent surveys have pointed to as well, even if their methodology and figures differ from CIRP's. Apple will roll out Siri AI, its overhauled AI assistant, in iOS 27 later this year, which could help retain existing iPhone owners. Attracting Android converts is a separate challenge, though Apple's upcoming foldable iPhone will introduce a new form factor that may appeal to some existing Android foldable owners. Popular StoriesiOS 27 Beta 2 Adds Inline Replies to iPhone-to-Android RCS ChatsMonday June 22, 2026 12:06 pm PDT by Juli CloverWith the second beta of iOS 27, Apple added support for replying to a specific message in an RCS conversation with an Android user. You can now long press on a message to get to the option to reply, and it works the same way that it does with iMessage. iOS 27 also displays tapback/reaction emoji to images and videos properly. In iOS 26, it would use a text descriptor, such as [x loved...EU Orders Google to Give Rival AI Apps the Same Android Access as GeminiThursday July 16, 2026 3:45 pm PDT by Juli CloverThe European Commission today formally ordered Google to give third-party AI services the same access to Android device features that Gemini has. Europe's Digital Markets Act requires software makers like Apple and Google to grant equal interoperability to third-party apps and services, and the EC is enforcing it. DMA interoperability rules are why Siri AI won't be available in the European...