A new report shows that the iPhone Air registered a steeper drop in resale value during the first 10 weeks of availability compared to the rest of the iPhone 17 line, as well as previous models. Here are the details.
iPhone Air resale value keeps falling, as rest of iPhone 17 line stabilizes
While it is still premature to label the iPhone Air as a flop, there has been more than enough data indicating that the device may not be performing as well as the rest of the iPhone 17 line.
Of course, that is to be expected up to a point, since it’s impossible to have every model sell exactly the same as its counterparts. But with rumors circulating about Apple moving the iPhone Air to “end of production” levels of manufacturing, and pushing the follow-up to the iPhone Air to 2027, the device’s situation looks less than ideal.
Adding to this list is a new report from SellCell, which concluded that the iPhone Air saw an up to 47.4% resale value drop in the first 10 weeks of availability, which they claim is the “worst resale drop of any iPhone since 2022”.
And while a 10-week period is definitely too short a window to offer an iron-clad conclusion, SellCell has been conducting the same analysis for years, which, if nothing else, offers a consistent base of comparison across multiple releases.
In the report, SellCell analyzes 52 iPhone SKUs since the release of the iPhone 14 lineup, and concludes that while the iPhone 16 line saw a steeper resale value drop during its first week, with an average loss of 42%, versus an average loss of 41% for the iPhone Air, and 40% of the iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro and iPhone 17 Pro Max, things took a turn after the 6th week.
By then, the average value loss of the iPhone Air was 43.4%, compared to 40.3% for the iPhone 16 line and just 36.7% for the rest of the iPhone 17 line.
SellCell also notes that “while iPhone 17 depreciation stabilises by week 10, the Air continues to fall, signalling likely long-term issues with resale confidence.”
At the other end of the spectrum, SellCell says that the iPhone 17 Pro Max 256GB is the best performer of the current line, “at 26.1% depreciation after ten weeks”.
All in all, it seems that the value drop for the entire iPhone 17 line is behaving very closely to the iPhone’s historical values, according to SellCell’s past analyses, with the exception of the iPhone Air, which is still trending downward.
You can find SellCell’s full report here, alongside the details of their methodology.
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