Apple had to replace 11 million crappy batteries with its $29 replacement program

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Remember that $29 battery replacement program Apple extended to customers who, well, had shitty batteries in their iPhone? Well, as it turns out, the company replaced 11 million of these suckers, according to Daring Fireball’s John Gruber. Gruber notes that Apple typically has to replace one to two million replacements during the same period.

Yea, that’s a lot of batteries. This also means that’s 11 million people who didn’t upgrade to a new iPhone. Think about it, if 11 million people didn’t upgrade to a new $1,000 iPhone, that roughly equates to $11 billion in lost revenue. Ouch.

For those of you out of the loop, Apple’s $29 battery replacement program came to a head with Apple publicly acknowledging that it had indeed been throttling older iPhones, saying its goal was to preserve battery life on those older models and prevent the random shutdowns. It rang hollow to customers, who felt it was a case of “too little, too late” in them being informed of this policy.

More about the battery replacement program

The most important part of Apple’s message for consumers was an offer toward the end: Apple said it would reduce the price of an out-of-warranty iPhone battery replacement to $29 from $79 “for anyone with an iPhone 6 or later whose battery needs to be replaced, available worldwide through December 2018.”

The good thing out of all of this is that Apple made some revenue from its poor batteries. If 11 million people had to pay $29 to get their battery replaced, that’s about $319 million in revenue from replaced batteries.

Sure, it’s not $11 billion, but hey, it’s better than nothing.

Were you one of the 11 million mentioned this post? Have any thoughts on this? Let us know down below in the comments or carry the discussion over to our Twitter or Facebook.

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Kevin Raposo

Kevin is KnowTechie's founder and executive editor. With over 15 years of blogging experience in the tech industry, Kevin has transformed what was once a passion project into a full-blown tech news publication. Shoot him an email at kevin@knowtechie.com or find him on Mastodon or Post.