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Apple has replaced its large core model, the… iPhone 16 Plus,with ultra-thin iPhone Air at its lineup last September, and a new report says demand has tripled — suggesting the company’s bet on better design has won over fans. But it’s still a drop compared to the Pro models, which make up 86% of all iPhone 17 series phones sampled.
Mobile analytics company Ookla has released a New report It shows that 6.8% of iPhone 17 series owners who conducted Speedtests in Q4 2025 used iPhone Air. This compares to 2.9% of those who used the iPhone 16 Plus in the previous generation. This shows an increase in the appeal of the slim 6.5-inch phone compared to the phone it replaced, which had a slightly larger 6.7-inch screen. It was a little more thin. (Disclosure: Ookla is owned by Ziff Davis, the same parent company as CNET, but it was It was recently sold to Accenture.)
Ookla’s graph shows the breakdown of phone ownership between the generations of the iPhone 16 series (in grey) and the iPhone 17 series (in blue). Note the second comparison from the top, which is between the iPhone 16 Plus and the iPhone Air.
This increase had to come from somewhere. According to Ookla data, the share of people using Apple’s smaller iPhone 17 Pro fell to 30.6%, down from 34.9% for the iPhone 16 Pro the previous year.
With 55.5% of Speedtest users running iPhone 17 Pro Max — down only slightly from the previous year — meaning 86.1% chose Apple’s pricier models over its base models. The standard iPhone 17 lagged behind by 7%, up from 5.9% the previous year.
That’s a surprising majority of iPhone 17 series owners who prefer the more expensive, more complete models, at least among those who use Ookla’s Speedtest to measure connection speeds. Whether Ookla’s sample represents the broader iPhone-owning population is another question.
Galaxy S25 Edge (right) compared to a slice of thin-crust pizza (left).
More people use the iPhone Air than the Galaxy S25 Edge
Another result from the Ookla report shows that among Speedtest users, more people are using iPhone Air globally than Speedtest users. Galaxy S25 Edge The gap is even wider in the US, where Apple’s thin phones outnumber Samsung’s 3 to 1. In countries like South Korea, where Samsung’s brand loyalty is strong, the gap is narrower, but the iPhone Air still comes out on top.
Ookla’s report only measured model split among Speedtest users, so it may not reflect actual sales differences between the two models — just a subset of users running connection tests. We’ve reached out to Ookla to clarify these numbers.
The iPhone Air is most popular in South Korea, Japan, and Sweden
While the US saw a modest 6.8% share of iPhone Air users among the iPhone 17 series, the thin phone appears to be more popular in other countries, though it hasn’t seriously competed with the Pro models anywhere.
South Korea topped the list, with the thin phone accounting for 11.2% of iPhone 17 series users, followed by Japan (8.9%), Sweden (8.6%) and Singapore (8.4%). These numbers suggest that buyers in these countries prioritized design over features offered by the Pro models, such as the extra telephoto camera and longer battery life.
Conversely, Ookla noted that the iPhone Air, which starts at $999, represents a much smaller share in countries where buyers are more price sensitive and prefer more affordable phones. This is especially true in markets where phones are typically paid for up front rather than through monthly installments from the carrier, as is common in the United States and parts of Europe. Brazil, Indonesia, India, and Malaysia all saw an adoption rate of less than 6% among iPhone 17 series models.
Modem comparison between Apple C1 (orange), Apple C1X (light blue), and Qualcomm X80 (dark blue). The C1 is used in the iPhone 16E, the C1X in the iPhone 17E and the Qualcomm X80 in the iPhone 17 series. This chart shows the download speeds for each modem operating in the US market.
Ookla says Apple’s modems are finally competing with Qualcomm’s
Another metric measured by Ookla—fitting with Speedtest’s focus on connectivity—compares Apple’s modem with competing Qualcomm chipsets. Apple has spent years developing its own mobile modem, which it first introduced with the C1 in the iPhone 16E. However, the iPhone 17 series did not use Apple’s modem, instead sticking with the Qualcomm X80 modem. Meanwhile, the newer iPhone 17E uses Apple’s updated C1X modem.
Ookla Speedtest data comes from all over the world, with each country’s unique 5G network setup creating different conditions for download speeds. Overall, while the C1X didn’t outperform the Qualcomm X80, it did reach parity — matching or close to its competitor’s download speeds.
More importantly, Ookla’s data shows that Apple’s latest modem significantly outperforms the speeds of its predecessor, the C1 modem. “Apple’s silicon has reached a critical maturity point,” the Ookla report said, and that appears to be true based on the numbers. This could mean that Apple modems will appear in the iPhone 18 lineup – although they will compete with newer modems used in Android phones, such as the Qualcomm X85 and MediaTek M90.
Speedtest data shows not only the iPhone’s capabilities for downloading basic data, but also how prepared it is for other tasks that will require constant connectivity in the future, such as accessing cloud-based AI for everything from ChatGPT to AI agents. Beyond smartphones, Ookla also points to the C1X’s capabilities for later modems that could be used in future MacBooks, allowing laptops to connect to networks beyond Wi-Fi, “and in doing so, redefining the fundamental expectations of mobile computing,” the Ookla report says.