Apple is celebrating its new iPhone as a fundamentally artificially intelligent device and hopes that it will boost sales, which have recently been stagnating. The problem: essential AI functions will not be available for months.
The iPhone 16 is an AI device from the ground up, CEO Tim Cook repeated like a mantra on Monday.
Manuel Orbegozo / REUTERS
The launch of the new iPhone is the most important event at Apple every year. After all, the world’s largest technology company owes more than half of its recent turnover of 383 billion dollars to the smartphone.
But 17 years after its invention, it is becoming increasingly difficult to reinvent and promote the iPhone year in, year out. On Monday, CEO Tim Cook therefore had one main message for viewers at the company’s headquarters in Cupertino and in front of their screens at home: “The new iPhone is an AI device from the ground up.” Cook and the other Apple managers repeated this message almost a dozen times in the 100-minute presentation.
It is so important for Apple because artificial intelligence – or “Apple Intelligence,” as the company calls its version of the technology – is set to usher in a new era in Cupertino. Since the advent of Chat-GPT almost two years ago, Apple has had to face criticism for being slow to jump on the generative AI bandwagon. Not only Open AI, but also competitors such as Microsoft, Google and Samsung had long since brought their new AI functions to market when Apple finally presented its answer to the AI revolution at its developer conference in June. Investors were already getting restless.
The new iPhone now plays a key role in Apple’s AI strategy. Many functions of “Apple Intelligence” will not work with older versions of the smartphone, but only with the version 16 that has now been presented.
Powerful silicon chip
The new device, which is entirely focused on AI, is intended to give users a reason to buy a new iPhone for 849 francs or more in Switzerland. Specifically, the iPhone that has now been introduced has – in addition to an ever-better camera – a particularly powerful silicon chip called A18, manufactured internally by Apple and based on powerful three-nanometer chip technology. This chip is the engine that makes the AI machine run. Thanks to “Apple Intelligence”, users can get help writing emails and messages, remove unwanted objects from photos, or have the AI summarize documents, emails and even phone calls.
These are all functions that users already know from the competition. But Apple’s selling point is that, firstly, the AI knows the user extremely well personally because the iPhone plays a key role in our lives – in other words, the AI can not only help with general knowledge questions, but also with questions like “When is my mother’s plane landing today?”. Secondly, Apple advertises the protection of its own data, because all of these queries are processed on the phone thanks to the powerful silicon chip and not in a data center.
No sales in the EU and China
But there are two crucial problems. The more serious one is that the new AI phone will go on sale from September 20th without the new AI software being available. “Apple Intelligence” will be part of the operating system update iOS18.1, and this will not be available until October. Even then, several of the AI functions now being advertised will not be available, such as the new voice assistant Siri or AI image generation functions.
In addition, Apple Intelligence will not be available in two key markets for the time being: the EU and China. Apple cited the regulation of the Digital Markets Act as the reason for the European market. “We are concerned that the interoperability requirements could force us to compromise the integrity of our products in a way that endangers users’ privacy and data security,” the company said.
In China, Apple has to look for another local cooperation partner, as the partnership with the chatbot of the Californian company Open AI is not permitted there. As Bloomberg reports, Apple is in talks with Baidu and Alibaba.
Both of these things could mean that the new iPhone will not be the best-seller that Apple had hoped for.
Other important announcements from Apple:
- New smartwatch: Apple Watch Series 10 has a larger, thinner screen with OLED technology (organic light-emitting diode) and now has an S10 silicon chip that supports “Apple Intelligence”. In addition, the software can now detect sleep apnea, i.e. impaired breathing regulation while sleeping. Price from 449 francs.
- New headphones: The Airpods 4 Bluetooth headphones are available in a version with active noise cancellation, which blocks out ambient noise and recognizes conversations. Calls can be accepted or rejected by nodding or shaking your head. Apple is also introducing a new version of the Airpods Pro: The second generation of these headphones is increasingly becoming a smart hearing aid and can, for example, increase the audio volume based on your own hearing profile. Conversely, when there is loud ambient noise, it turns it down for protection. Price from 129 francs.
