It isn't both because they do PR about building a robot that can disassemble iPhones, but there are only two of them in the world and even if they were run nonstop they could only recycle 1% of the iPhones Apple manufactures in the same amount of time.
In the meantime most of the iPhones people trade in are sent to third party "recyclers" who don't recover nearly as much of the materials and are contractually required to shred the devices without recovering functional parts for reuse, even though that would reduce the amount of ewaste by several fold -- once for the device already on its way for the shredder, and again for each of the devices that could have been repaired from its operational parts.
It's a cynical take because it's a cynical marketing ploy.
> Apple is only operating two Daisy models—one in the Netherlands and another at the company’s Material Recovery Lab in Texas—that each process up to 1.2 million iPhones per year. Achieving circularity may seem futile considering how Apple sells 200 times as many iPhones annually...
There is no reason it cannot be both reasons and I find your take overly and needlessly cynical.