If Apple hadn’t made this change those phones would have randomly turned off instead. Those people probably would’ve gone and bought either a new were iPhone or switch to android like you did.

On the whole I don’t think this would have caused anyone to spend money they wouldn’t have otherwise. Perhaps they would have stayed with their phone longer.

It’s hard to tell, and this is certainly worse than if they had just told people about the battery in the first place (although I imagine THAT would’ve become a scandal two).