American teenagers are still choosing Apple's iPhone over the competition, with 82 percent of surveyed U.S. teens saying that they own an iPhone, according to Piper Jaffray's latest survey (via Business Insider).
This number has grown steadily from 76 percent in April 2017 to 78 percent in October 2017, and it now appears to have plateaued temporarily in 2018, as 82 percent of teens said they owned an iPhone back in April.
Looking to the future, 86 percent of teens surveyed said that they plan on buying an iPhone as their next smartphone. This is an increase from 84 percent in the spring.
In comparison, 10 percent of the teens said they planned on buying an Android smartphone next, down from 11 percent in the spring. The researchers at Piper Jaffray say that American teens' intent to buy an iPhone is now at the highest they have ever seen.
Other tidbits from the report include: 45 percent of teens saying that the brand of an item is the most important factor in a purchase decision, Amazon is the top preferred website, and Instagram is now the most used social platform as Facebook faces an ongoing decline. Netflix represented 38 percent of daily video consumption, ahead of YouTube (33 percent), cable TV (16 percent), and Hulu (5 percent).
For this survey, Piper Jaffray surveyed around 8,600 teenagers across 47 states with an average age of 16 and an average household income of $68,300. 44 percent of the teens were female, while 56 were male.
Monday October 27, 2025 7:55 am PDT by Joe Rossignol
The upcoming iOS 26.1 update includes a handful of new features and changes for iPhones, including a toggle for changing the appearance of the Liquid Glass design, "slide to stop" for alarms in the Clock app, and more.
Below, we outline key details about iOS 26.1.
Release Date
Given that Apple has yet to seed an iOS 26.1 Release Candidate, which is typically the final beta version, the...
Wednesday October 29, 2025 4:22 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple is about to drop iOS 26.1, the first major point release since iOS 26 was rolled out in September, and there are at least six notable changes and improvements to look forward to. We've rounded them up below.
Apple has already provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate version of iOS 26.1, which means Apple will likely roll out the update to all compatible...
Monday October 27, 2025 4:51 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple is designing an updated version of the Apple TV 4K, and rumors suggest that it could come out sometime in the next couple of months. We're not expecting a major overhaul with design changes, but even a simple chip upgrade will bring major improvements to Apple's set-top box.
Subscribe to the MacRumors YouTube channel for more videos.
We've rounded up all the latest Apple TV rumors.
...
Tuesday October 28, 2025 1:07 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple today provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate versions of upcoming iOS 26.1, iPadOS 26.1, macOS Tahoe 26.1, tvOS 26.1, watchOS 26.1, and visionOS 26.1 updates for testing purposes. The RCs betas come a week after Apple released the fourth betas.
The new betas can be downloaded from the Settings app on a compatible device by going to General > Software...
Monday October 27, 2025 9:15 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple this month refreshed the 14-inch MacBook Pro base model with its new M5 chip, and higher-end 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pro models with M5 Pro and M5 Max chips are expected to follow in early 2026. However, these machines will represent the final update to the current design, with Apple reportedly developing a completely new version of the MacBook Pro packed with next-generation hardware...
Thursday October 30, 2025 4:42 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple's iPhone development roadmap runs several years into the future and the company is continually working with suppliers on several successive iPhone models at the same time, which is why we often get rumored features months ahead of launch. The iPhone 18 series is no different, and we already have a good idea of what to expect for the iPhone 18 Pro and iPhone 18 Pro Max.
One thing worth...
Tuesday October 28, 2025 1:21 pm PDT by Juli Clover
Apple today provided developers and public beta testers with the release candidate version of macOS Tahoe 26.1, which means the update will likely see a public launch next week.
The release candidate includes notes on what's in the update, so we have a full picture of the new features that Apple has included.
macOS Tahoe 26.1 adds AutoMix support over AirPlay, improved FaceTime audio...
Wednesday October 29, 2025 7:13 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Rumors are stoking excitement for the next-generation iPad mini that Apple is reportedly close to launching. So what should we expect from the successor to the iPad mini 7 that Apple released over a year ago? Read on to find out.
Processor and Performance
Apple is working on a next-generation version of the iPad mini (codename J510/J511) that features the A19 Pro chip, according to...
Tuesday October 28, 2025 5:27 am PDT by Tim Hardwick
Apple is preparing to bring support for its digital car key feature to Jetour vehicles, according to evidence uncovered on Apple's backend by MacRumors contributor Aaron Perris.
Introduced in 2022, Car Keys allows an iPhone or Apple Watch to unlock a vehicle through the Wallet app. A digital version of a car key is stored in Wallet, and unlocking can be done by holding an Apple Watch or...
When they say "teens intend to buy", I expect that there's a significant portion of the group that intend to have money from parents involved. And those parents could balk and veto whatever the teen wants.
Obviously those teens are price-insensitive. It doesn't matter how trivial the new features are, it's worth it because it's basically free to them.
I'd say this bears out even past high school and into late teens, early twenties. I help develop the official app for a large university, both iOS and Android versions, and 70-75% of our daily active users are iPhone users, and our user base is a solid 80% of 35,000 students.
That says to me that the ratio of university-aged students owning iPhones vs. Android is extremely skewed toward iPhone vs the Android market share worldwide. Granted, university students also tend to come from more affluence in general, households where bargain Android handsets aren't pushed. Though we also tend to see a lot of college students owning 5s, 6, 6s... possibly hand-me-downs from siblings and parents, as iPhones do tend to have a longer life cycle.
