I'm curious about the environmental argument here. At face value it makes sense, but is there some hard data that shows that there is a meaningful number of consumers that buy new phones only (or "mostly") because of battery degradation?

The article (granted, probably not the best source of information) has some numbers like "number of phones sold", but doesn't actually tackle the crux of the issue: how many of those phone sales would be prevented by having user swappable batteries?

My previous phone was refurbished and was great in all ways except for battery life. I have now bought a new phone that I wouldn't have bought if batteries were replaceable.

Having said that, I do like having waterproof phones, and I expect this rule would make that harder.