Less than a year after the introduction of his artificial intelligence options, Apple brings the function to the most affordable iPhone.
On Wednesday, the company unveiled an iPhone that costs $ 599 and has an AI system that calls the Apple Intelligence. The device brings AI functions such as reporting numbers and writing recommendations in English to the lowest priced iPhone model of the company, because it is preparing to expand those functions to other languages in the coming months, including Chinese, Portuguese and located English for India.
The new phone, which calls Apple the iPhone 16th, has no start button or touch -that has been phased out. Instead, the phone has been unlocked with a face recognition system called Face ID that has been available on most iPhones since 2017.
The iPhone 16th is the first update of the cheapest smartphone line of the company since 2022, replacement The iPhone SE of the company. The cheaper telephones have helped Apple to get his characteristic product in the pockets of price -sensitive customers, which often trade in for more expensive models the next time they buy a phone.
Apple introduces the new iPhone at a critical moment. The iPhone activities of the company have been in a malaise, with a turnover of 2 percent compared to their peak of $ 205.5 billion in 2022. Tim Cook, the Chief Executive of Apple, has part of the struggles of the iPhone on the limited availability of Apple Intelligence, which was announced, announced announced, announced, it was announced, announced, announced announced, announced announced, announced months before it became available and is only offered on the newest models of the company in English markets such as the United States. In a phone call with analysts last month, Mr. Cook said that the new AI functions of the company iPhone sales have delivered in markets where it was available.
But surveys have shown that AI has not been an important reason that people buy new phones, said Jeff Fieldhack, research director at Counterpoint Research, a market research agency. “People buy telephones for the same reasons they always have: the battery does not charge whether the phone is aging and does not work,” he said.
Apple's company can also be benefited from increasing the price of its introductory model. The iPhone 16th is 40 percent more expensive than the last iPhone SE, which cost $ 429. The increase means that Apple is to collect $ 170 more on each of the cheapest iPhones it sells. That will increase the total turnover at a time when the number of telephones it sells is relatively stable, with around 230 million telephones per year.
The higher price comes after President Trump has imposed a rate of 10 percent on all imports from China. Apple makes a majority of his iPhones in China, but the decision to increase prices at the lowest priced iPhone is probably not related, said Richard Kramer, partner at Arete Research, a stock research agency.
“These decisions are taken months before action is taken,” said Mr. Kramer. “This is the start of Apple lift prices about the range of the range at a time when volume growth is quite moribund.”
Expanding the availability of Apple Intelligence is crucial for the company's efforts to ward off rivals and to expand the sale abroad. In China, the second most important market in Apple, the share of the company in the sale of smartphones fell 2.4 percentage points to 15.5 percent last year, because rivals such as Huawei gained ground, according to counterpunt research.
In India, one of the world's fastest growing smartphone markets, the iPhone 15 was the best -selling smartphone in the last three months of last year, Counterpoint said. The popularity of the device helped Apple to increase its market share in India by two percentage points to 11 percent.
With the iPhone 16th, Apple introduces its first custom -designed fashion chip called the C1. The chip offers 5G connectivity and replaces the fashion chips of Qualcomm. Apple has been developing the chip since 2019, when it has resolved a lawsuit against Qualcomm about the license costs of the chip maker and bought the fashion activities of Intel.
Ben Bajarin, Chief Executive of Creative Strategies, a technical research agency, said that the new ModemChip will not have all the functions of the Qualcomm modems, but will enable Apple to test the component before it is recorded in future iPhone releases. Eventually, he said, the customized modem from Apple will improve the battery performance of iPhones and bring wireless connectivity with other Apple products.
'Is it going to come to an iPad? Is it coming to a Mac? How far can they take this? “Bajarin said.
Apple introduced the iPhone 16th with less fanfare than normal. The company posted a short film of 13 minutes on its website with Mr. Cook that described the new phone. When it introduced the iPhone SE in 2022, he held an one -hour event at the head office in Cupertino, Calif.
