[specialp]

It is ironic that Apple is mentioning this as I believe this is going to spell the end of their era of massive profits. Phones now are getting to the state where much like PCs, the older phone is good enough, and the new phone is not substantially better. There will always be people buying a phone for .2ghz more CPU or some slightly higher res screen, but the days of rapid evolution of mobile devices are over, and Apple is going to have problems selling someone a $6-800 phone every year or 2.

[cookiemonsta]

But with new OS versions, older phones quickly start to show their age. An iphone 4 or iphone 4s on the latest version of iOS it supports is really sluggish and slow (and no easy way to put iOS6/7 back on it)

[empressplay]

this is by design, though, obviously.

providing "upgrades" to previous models incapable of truly supporting them is kind of an Apple trademark

[21]

A large part of iPhone's market is as a status symbol. As the saying goes, the only thing worse than not having an iPhone is having last year's one.