Apple Used To Put Stickers In Every iPhone Box – So Why Did It Stop?
Longtime iPhone buyers are probably familiar with Apple's packaging strategy for the handset, and how it evolved over the years. iPhone boxes are notoriously hard to open because Apple wants to give consumers that moment of anticipation before getting their hands on the device. The iPhone is the first thing that appears once the box is open, while the layer underneath contains the accessories and documentation. However, regular iPhone buyers upgrading to an iPhone 16 or iPhone 17 model will not find a familiar perk: the Apple stickers that came with previous iPhone models and other Apple products. Apple stopped including Apple-logo stickers in boxes in 2024 for environmental reasons. Apple moved to a 100% fiber-based product packaging strategy, and the Apple stickers were removed, as they're made of plastic.
It's not just the iPhone that lost the iconic stickers showing Apple logos. In February 2024, the Apple Vision Pro was the first new Apple product to ship without stickers in the box. In May 2024, the M4 iPad Pro and new iPad Air also lost the Apple stickers. The iPhone 16 series launched in September 2024, debuting with 100% fiber-based packaging, which meant the stickers were gone. Apple is pursuing a self-imposed strategy to become carbon neutral by 2030.
Apple product users who keep tabs on Apple news may have seen this change coming. Apple removed the charging brick from iPhones in 2020, when the iPhone 12 series launched. At the time, the company said that eliminating the charger from the iPhone box allowed it to shrink the retail box and ship 70% more boxes on a pallet than before, which was akin to removing 450,000 cars from the road every year. The plastic Apple stickers were likely to be removed eventually.
Why did Apple include stickers in product boxes?
The iPhone wasn't the first product to come with free Apple logo stickers in the box. This marketing strategy started in the late '70s, when Apple added free decals to the Apple II retail boxes. Apple continued including free stickers with other Apple computers. Initially, the decals featured the bitten apple image in rainbow colors, but Apple changed the stickers after 1998, when it switched to a solid color logo that replaced the rainbow version. This was almost a decade before Steve Jobs unveiled the original iPhone.
Apple continued using the free stickers in the years that followed, shipping them with various key products in its lineup, including the Mac, iPod, iPhone, and iPad. Apple fans appreciated the decals, sticking them to all sorts of surfaces, which may explain why Apple decided to offer consumers this free perk for several decades. The Apple logo stickers turned out to be an effective advertising campaign for a company that painted itself as the underdog in computing in its early years.
Apple was an underdog when the original iPhone launched, though the product ended up revolutionizing the smartphone business, helping Apple grow significantly in the years since it first hit stores. The company kept shipping those stickers in iPhone boxes for 17 years, acknowledging that many buyers appreciated and expected to find them in retail boxes. However, removing two Apple stickers from iPhone boxes accounts for about 400 tons of unused plastic, per BasicAppleGuy. Unless Apple finds a way to make environmentally-friendly stickers, it's unlikely they'll make a return.