> Releasing a new iPhone every year at this point is stupid

That buying a new iPhone is stupid for the typical user doesn’t mean releasing a new on every year is stupid for Apple.

If users upgrade their iPhone every X years, Apple still can sell their new model to 1/X of their customers.

That means they have extra costs of having to design more new models and losing some economies of scale, but it also removes some risks:

- it prevents their phones from looking old compared to the competition

- it means that a slightly flawed design can be iterated upon faster

- at Apple’s sales numbers, I’m not sure economies of scale matter much. Scaling down might even help them. Imagine having to negotiate production of half a billion identical screens over a period of X years. A one-year contract for a hundred million ones means Apple can switch easier between suppliers, putting some pressure on suppliers to offer lower prices.