Siri AI Isn't Moving the Needle for iPhone Upgrades, UBS Survey Suggests

Apple bet big that smarter Siri and “Apple Intelligence” would give people a reason to buy a new iPhone. So far, the data says the bet isn’t paying off.

UBS Evidence Lab surveyed more than 7,500 smartphone users across the US, UK, Germany, China, and Japan to gauge whether Apple’s AI push has shifted purchasing behavior. The results, published Tuesday by Wccftech, show the opposite of what Apple would have hoped: only 24% of respondents said they would upgrade their device specifically for the new Siri AI and Apple Intelligence features. That’s down 5 percentage points from last year’s survey.

Meanwhile, the share of respondents who said they simply don’t care about these AI features rose to 31%, up 3 points from the previous reading. For a company that has positioned Apple Intelligence as a flagship differentiator for its latest hardware, the trend line is heading in the wrong direction.

The survey wasn’t all bad news. In the US, 20% of respondents said they plan to buy an iPhone within the next month — up 3 percentage points year-over-year. The UK saw a 6-point jump, Germany gained 4, and Japan added 1. China was the only market to dip, falling 1 point.

The average iPhone in use today is 22.9 months old, which is 0.8 months younger than in the previous survey. That suggests some shortening of upgrade cycles, though the figure still sits near the high end of the survey’s historical range.

But the headline number is the one that matters most for Apple’s AI narrative. When nearly a third of users say they have no interest in Siri AI or Apple Intelligence, and the share of those motivated by these features is shrinking, it raises a real question: how much does AI actually drive phone sales?

Apple has poured engineering resources into making Siri smarter and adding system-wide AI features in iOS 27. But the UBS data suggests these efforts haven’t yet translated into a compelling reason for most people to open their wallets. The challenge for Apple isn’t building the technology — it’s making consumers care.