Apple quietly buries the plus, and the air is already gasping

The fourth iPhone never sells—apple keeps rewriting the obituary. After three generations of Plus models that barely scraped 3 % of active devices in the US, the iPhone 17 Air has doubled that number in its first holiday quarter, according to Ookla Speedtest logs. The slab-thin 5.6 mm curiosity is still nobody’s darling, yet it is already twice as alive as the phone it replaced.

A corpse with better numbers is still a corpse

Six point eight per cent sounds like progress until you notice the Pro siblings routinely top thirty. The Air’s single-lens camera and L-shaped battery remain the same compromises that sank the 12 mini, the 13 mini and every Plus before them. Thinness is a party trick, not a value prop; Asian markets love the aesthetic, but华尔街 still clocks it as filler between the $799 baseline and the $1 199 Pro Max.

apple knows. Supply-chain chatter out of Korea already sketches an iPhone 18 Plus resurrection for 2026: same screen size as the Air, thicker chassis, bigger cell, two cameras, price slot half-way between vanilla and Pro. The ghost is knocking because the Air’s gross margin is thinner than its waistline, and Cupertino hates SKUs that do not print money.

Why this matters today

Carriers are locking Q4 promotional budgets right now. If you are betting on trade-in maths, the Air’s resale curve will cliff-dive the moment a 18 Plus render leaks. Meanwhile, the used-iPhone 16 Plus is becoming the best large-screen deal in the ecosystem: identical silicon, identical camera, 20 % more battery than the regular 16, and refurb prices already under $650.

apple’s product matrix is a pendulum, not a line. Every three years the company admits the middle child is ugly, swaps the name, and ships the same gap-tooth feature set in a new coat. The Air is simply the Plus with a waist trainer. Enjoy the diet, but do not be shocked when the calories come back next cycle.