Anecdotally, plenty of my friends have 16gb phones still, and often are deleting and reinstalling apps like instagram/snapchat/anything you can dispense for a few days to free up storage to actually use the device. Want to record a 2 minute video? Better delete an app or else recording will abruptly cease. While I still had a 16gb phone, it got to the point where I wasn't reliably getting emails pushed to the device because it was always full, yet I had only a small handful of apps.

This isn't 2010 where everyone wants the top 25 apps, and could actually install them since they weren't hitting 100mb each. Inflation of app sizes and continued premiums on useful storage amounts from Apple has been forcing people to cut the fat and keep only the most essential apps installed. Even if you had a large iCloud account for your photos or texts to reside off your device, you still need local storage for apps.