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author | zheng xutong, china business news

apple will hold a fall conference in the early morning of september 10th, beijing time, to launch the new iphone 16 mobile phone and update the system. apple has previously announced that the ios 18 system will be launched this fall, and ios 18, ipados 18, and macos sequoia systems will provide apple intelligence intelligent systems.

as apple's new iphone 16 is about to be launched, and some apple mobile phone models including the iphone 16 will be equipped with apple intelligence in the future, this press conference has attracted much attention, and the market also expects the iphone 16 to trigger apple's "super sales cycle". according to the reporter's analysis, there are speculations about the price and form of apple's new products, and many market research institutions are concerned about whether the iphone 16 can drive the growth of apple's mobile phone sales. some market research institutions predict that the price of apple's iphone 16 may increase due to the installation of apple intelligence.

will the price of iphone 16 increase?

there are many speculations about the content of apple's press conference. well-known apple whistleblower mark gurman predicts that apple will launch the iphone 16 series, the new airpods max headphones, and the low-end airpods 4 at this conference. apple will not release the apple watch. he predicts that the iphone 16 model will be equipped with a touch camera button, and the focus of the press conference will be on ai and the a18 chip.

trendforce predicts that the new iphone 16 series will use the new a18 and a18 pro processors respectively. in order to support apple intelligence functions, the iphone 16 will fully upgrade the dram (dynamic random access memory). in addition, trendforce predicts that the a18 and a18 pro used by the iphone 16 will be manufactured using tsmc's 3nm process, and the panel sizes of the two iphone 16 pro series phones will be slightly larger than the previous generation.

whether the price of iphone 16 will increase is the focus of various analysis agencies and analysts. from the perspective of components, the price of memory has increased this year, and apple has invested a certain amount of cost in the research and development of apple intelligence.

trendforce predicts that the total cost of the iphone 16 will increase slightly due to the increase in memory prices, but considering the downward trend in the mobile phone market, apple is expected to continue to adopt a cautious pricing strategy. the us dollar pricing of the four new iphone 16 models is expected to be the same as that of the iphone 15 series, or slightly increased due to cost increases. apple may follow the strategy of last year's pro max and increase the basic capacity starting point to 256gb to dilute the impression of price increases.

when the iphone 15 series was released last year, the starting prices of the iphone 15, iphone 15 plus, iphone 15 pro, and iphone 15 pro max were $799, $899, $999, and $1,199, respectively. trendforce predicts that the starting prices of the iphone 16, iphone 16 plus, iphone 16 pro, and iphone 16 pro max will be $799, $899, $1,099, and $1,199, respectively. mark gurman predicts that the entry price of the iphone 16 pro will not increase from $999.

analysts at market research firm counterpoint research predict that apple may offset the cost of running apple intelligence by slightly raising prices. earlier, neil shah, partner and vice president of research at counterpoint research, told reporters that integrating apple intelligence into apple devices is an expensive investment, requiring a lot of r&d resources to develop and train models with billions of parameters and ensure that data can be securely stored in apple's "private cloud" and that it can interact with a large number of apple applications centered on apple intelligence in the future. at some point, apple will have to make a profit through apple intelligence or related services, and the ideal price may be us$9.99 or higher.

will it usher in apple’s “super sales cycle”?

various institutions have different opinions on whether the iphone 16 will start apple's "super sales cycle".

investment bank wedbush previously released a report saying that the iphone 16 series will usher in the largest upgrade cycle in apple's history, and the initial shipments of the iphone 16 series are expected to exceed 90 million units, exceeding the previous market expectations of 80 million to 84 million units. about 300 million iphones in the world have not been upgraded in more than four years, laying the foundation for a sharp surge in demand. as the ai-driven upgrade cycle takes shape, apple's iphone sales in fiscal 2025 may exceed 240 million units.

counterpoint research analysts also mentioned that the positive factor for apple phones is that apple’s last iphone revenue super cycle was in 2021, so a considerable number of consumers will use iphone 12 and iphone 13, and these consumers may decide to upgrade and drive iphone revenue growth.

trendforce predicts that the market's expectations for apple intelligence have increased, and given the low base in 2023, the total output of apple's four new iphone 16 series models is expected to reach 86.7 million units in the second half of 2024. it is not ruled out that apple will have the opportunity to surpass samsung and become the number one in the annual smartphone production market share for the first time by the end of the year.

however, some market research institutions and analysts believe that the growth in iphone sales brought by apple intelligence will not be reflected so quickly, so iphone revenue this year will remain stable rather than grow rapidly.

counterpoint research analysts expect that the launch of the iphone 16 series is expected to increase the base of iphones equipped with apple intelligence to more than 125 million units by the end of 2024. the impact of apple intelligence on apple's shipment and revenue growth will be more evident in 2025 and beyond, as the rollout of ai is phased in terms of features and regions, while iphone revenue is expected to remain flat this year.

mark gurman predicts that although there has been talk of the iphone 16 kicking off apple's "super sales cycle", this will not happen, and it is the iphone 17 that has the opportunity to kick off the "super sales cycle".

nabila popal, research director at market research firm idc, also believes that although apple's new phone has many highlights, including being equipped with apple intelligence, since apple intelligence does not have complete language support, it is difficult to bring much growth to the new product. its impact is more to prevent apple's decline.

idc analyst ryan reith believes that consumers will pay attention to apple intelligence, but consumers also have other options such as gpt to use ai functions, so it is difficult for apple intelligence to directly drive new consumer purchases. without promotions and large discounts, the development of the ai ​​smartphone market will still be very challenging.

in addition, apple is also facing competition. huawei's press conference almost overlaps with apple's. huawei will launch the three-fold mobile phone matext extraordinary master at the press conference on september 10. the phone has been opened for pre-order, and huawei mall shows that the number of reservations for this product has exceeded 2 million.

nabila popal believes that apple faces competition, especially from the chinese market, such as its competitor huawei. china has always been apple's largest market, but huawei has begun to recover in recent years, causing apple's rapid growth trend in the past few years to stagnate or even decline slightly.

market analysis firm techinsight recently published an article stating that if the release time interval between huawei and apple is long, it may cause a large number of consumers to choose the iphone 16 series, and huawei is determined to maintain its leading position in the third quarter and attract some apple users. techinsight data shows that huawei's market share in china exceeded apple in the first and second quarters of this year.