2024-09-15 13:05:28
Apple on Monday announced the launch of a new iPhone equipped with generative artificial intelligence (AI), in an attempt to boost its sales and keep up with the technological race.
These are the “first iPhones designed from the ground up for Apple Intelligence,” Apple CEO Tim Cook said in a video released at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino, California, and online.
The Silicon Valley tech giant is betting big on its iPhone 16 and hopes to woo customers with AI-powered models.
With sales of $39 billion last quarter, the iPhone accounts for 60% of Apple’s revenue and remains the gateway to the firm’s services, such as the App Store and Apple TV, which are becoming increasingly important for the company founded by the late Steve Jobs.
“These new iPhones are very important. It is Apple’s most profitable product category and an essential part of its rapidly expanding universe of services and subscriptions, its second most profitable activity,” said Gadjo Sevilla, an analyst at Emarketer.
Apple is having to deal with customers who tend to hold on to their iPhone models for longer and longer.
“This iPhone 16 launch is all about Apple Intelligence” and the AI revolution, Wedbush analyst Dan Ives summed up in a note to investors.
“Apple Intelligence” is a new type of computing capabilities for all of the company’s devices, announced in June along with a partnership with OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT.
Initially, these capabilities include AI-powered image editing, translation, creative features for messaging, in line with similar proposals from OpenAI or Google.
According to the company, its AI will even be able to suggest responses to emails. Users will be able to ask Siri, Apple’s voice assistant, more complicated questions, for example to find a photo in their albums using a simple verbal description.
Ives expects software developers to create apps and services enhanced with AI features, which would boost iPhone sales.
Google, Meta (Facebook and Instagram), and Microsoft (the main investor in OpenAI) have been marketing tools for several months that allow the production of high-quality content through simple requests.
– Strategy and risks –
“Apple will likely explain that only newer devices will be able to fully utilize AI,” Sevilla said.
“This strategy has a dual objective: by rolling out its new system more slowly (…) it will be easier to manage on a large scale and access to the new AI will lead (consumers) to buy the latest models,” replacing the old ones, he added.
But Forrester analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee warns that “if Apple customers see little difference” between the new line of phones and the previous ones, “they will be in no hurry to upgrade.”
Across all brands, sales of smartphones with generative AI are expected to grow 344% worldwide this year, according to consulting firm IDC, and will account for 18% of the total smartphone market by the end of the year.
© Agence France-Presse
