Apple Upgrade Program

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<div style="font: bold 2em/1.2 -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, 'SF Pro Display', 'Helvetica Neue', Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; color: var(--wiki-color);">Apple Upgrade Program</div>
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! class="ios-lab" | Operator
| class="ios-val" | [[Apple]] (financing via partner bank) — as the iPhone Upgrade Program
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! class="ios-lab" | Launched
| class="ios-val" | September 2015 (with the [[iPhone 6s]])
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! class="ios-lab" | Terms
| class="ios-val" | 24 monthly payments, 0% interest · [[AppleCare+]] included
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! class="ios-lab" | Upgrade
| class="ios-val" | Trade up to a new iPhone after 12 payments
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{{Apple Navbox}}

The iPhone Upgrade Program is Apple's answer to the carrier contract it helped kill: buy the phone from Apple on two years of interest-free payments, [[AppleCare+]] bundled, unlocked for any carrier — and swap to the new model every September after half the payments. Introduced in 2015 as subsidies died, it reframed the iPhone as a subscription with a screen.

= Position =

The program locks the upgrade cycle to Apple's own register rather than the carriers', feeds pristine one-year-old phones into [[Apple Trade In]]'s refurbished pipeline, and quietly normalizes the never-paid-off phone. It remains U.S.-centric and iPhone-only — the model for the hardware-as-subscription future Apple keeps being predicted to ship.

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