Companies often tend to draw the public’s attention to their new products. And sometimes, they do that using negative ways, for instance, Apple Corp. A recent study held suspicions that Apple slows down the old iPhones to encourage users to buy newly launched ones.

Apple’s trick for old iPhones pointed out by a research

As a matter of fact, a study in the U.S once analyzed worldwide keywords searched for “iPhone slow” and realized that the search term was unusually high around the time of the new Apple iPhone launch. Then, it compared the results with the searches for “Samsung Galaxy slow” and discovered that term was little affected by new Samsung releases. The study, carried out by Ph.D. student Laura Trucco of Harvard University, accuses Apple of deliberately sabotaging its old products.

In an article written for the New York Times, Mr. Sendhil Mullainathan, an economics professor at Harvard also, used the word ‘striking’ when he wanted to describe the results. “Wouldn’t many business owners love to make their old product less useful whenever they released a newer one?”, “When you sell the device and control the operating system, that’s an option.” Mr. Mullainathan wrote. However, facing the criticism coming from the community, Apple is yet to provide any responses.

Then, exactly, how can Apple sabotage its older products? Well, the answer is through software updates. iPhone users might have been familiar with the notifications of upgrading OS showed on their phones. If you choose not to upgrade, that notification window will reappear again and again until you say “yes.” A user once said: “If you want to keep your iPhone running at the same speed, do not do the software upgrade that comes out within six months of a new iPhone release!”

Apple makes all old iPhones slower when new ones are launching

In conclusion, we think it’s not a smart move for Apple to use tricks like this to increase its profit. Anyway, Apple is a smartphone business with a super high reputation, so it needs to maintain that image in customers’ mind. Don’t you agree with us?