Apple presented its new range of iPhones on Monday, the first smartphones equipped with Apple Intelligence, its new generative artificial intelligence (AI) system, the star technology of Silicon Valley in which the Californian group is highly anticipated.
“We are excited to introduce the first iPhones designed from the ground up for Apple Intelligence and its revolutionary capabilities,” said Tim Cook, the head of the Apple company, in a video broadcast at the headquarters in Cupertino (California) and online.
To keep the suspense going during its conference entitled “It’s your time to shine”, the company then launched its new smartwatches (Apple Watch).
The Californian group is betting big on its new iPhones, while its neighbor Google and especially the South Korean Samsung, the world number one in smartphones, have already launched handsets infused with generative AI.
And Apple needs a selling point to revive its phones, which have been losing momentum. For the April-June period, iPhone sales fell 1 percent year-over-year to $39 billion.
“These new iPhones are very important. They are Apple’s most profitable product category and a key part of its expanding universe of services and subscriptions, its second most profitable business,” said Gadjo Sevilla, an analyst at Emarketer.
– “Renaissance” –
In early June, a year and a half after startup OpenAI kicked off the generative AI wave with ChatGPT, Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence, a system that helps integrate the new technology into its devices.
According to the company, its AI will be able to suggest responses to emails and create images. Users will also be able to ask Siri, the voice assistant, more complicated questions, for example to find a photo in their albums by describing it orally.
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Google, Meta (Facebook, Instagram) and Microsoft (OpenAI’s main investor) have been offering and marketing tools for months that allow the production of high-quality content based on a simple query in everyday language.
Apple users will get access to new features this fall, but some of them will have to wait until 2025. And some will likely require a paid subscription.
“Apple will probably explain that only the most recent devices will be able to take full advantage of Apple Intelligence,” commented Gadjo Sevilla.
“This strategy has a dual objective: deploying the new system more slowly (…) will be easier to manage on a large scale and access to the new AI will encourage people to buy the most recent models.”
For Dan Ives, Apple fans’ desire “for an iPhone 16 will trigger a much-anticipated growth renaissance in Cupertino (the group’s headquarters) over the next year.”
– “New life” –
The Wedbush Securities analyst is also betting on a recovery in China, a strategic market for Apple. The group’s revenues in this country fell by 6.5% in the spring quarter.
Across all brands, sales of smartphones powered by generative AI are expected to grow by 344% this year worldwide according to IDC and represent 18% of the total market by the end of 2024.
Some observers, however, express doubts about Apple’s ability to capitalize on generative AI.
“If Apple customers see little difference” between the new line and previous ones, “they won’t be in a hurry to upgrade,” said Dipanjan Chatterjee, an analyst at Forrester.
With AI assistants being pushed by competitors, attention will focus on the Siri update.
Dipanjan Chatterjee hopes that Apple will “breathe new life into its voice assistant which has proven less than ideal to use so far.”
Generative AI assistants, such as Gemini (Google), Meta AI or Copilot (Microsoft), are supposed to gradually become a kind of personal secretaries, available and well-informed, depending on their access to messages, calendar, photos, etc.
Experts believe that Apple will emphasize data security and privacy within Apple Intelligence, especially since the new system relies in part on a partnership with a third-party company, OpenAI.
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