Apple on Tuesday released a new generation of iPhone product lines, including the thinner iPhone Air, and kept prices stable under the pressure of U.S. President Donald Trump, although these tariffs have affected company profits.
According to Reuters, the new iPhone Air is equipped with a high-density battery and a new processor, starting at $999. Wall Street has previously closely watched whether Apple would raise the price of iPhones or offset tariff costs by raising the price of large-capacity versions.
At the company's annual new product launch conference, CEO Tim Cook said: "This is the biggest leap in the history of iPhone." Apple said this is the most durable iPhone in history, using the A19Pro chip, with improved energy efficiency and performance to adapt to thinner batteries.
Apple has also released iPhone17, iPhone17 Pro, as well as the new AirPods Pro wireless headphones and a new Apple Watch with blood pressure monitoring.
Among them, the 256GB iPhone 17 starts at $799, the same price as the previous generation iPhone 16, but the storage capacity doubles. The iPhone 17 Pro starts at $1,099, which is the same price as the previous generation of models with the same specifications, but no longer offers a low-capacity version of $999. Prices of the new Apple Watch and AirPods Pro3 also remain the same.
Analysts said this shows that Apple is willing to absorb tariff costs on its own to cope with the pressure from Samsung, Google and its Chinese local competitors. Apple expects these tariffs could bring billions of dollars in costs. Apple's stock price fell 1.6% after the news was announced.
"Apple hopes to maintain the original price as much as possible so that consumers can upgrade equipment at the same price last year under tariff pressure in the second half of this year."The iPhone Air will face Samsung Galaxy S25Edge head-on. Analysts believe that this may be the prelude to Apple's entry into the folding screen mobile phone market, which is particularly popular in the Chinese market.
PP Foresight analyst Paolo Pescatore said: "This new device brings a long-lost freshness to the iPhone, and the improved iPhone series will help Apple reach more user groups."
Apple's press conference did not focus much on how to catch up with competitors in the AI field such as Google. Google recently used its flagship phone to showcase Gemini AI model capabilities, while Apple mainly relies on cooperation with ChatGPT developer OpenAI to enhance AI capabilities on devices.
Apple said that the iPhone Air will be equipped with the new "N1" chip for Wi-Fi communication and will use the new "C1X" baseband chip to process cellular network data. Previously, the related chips were supplied by Broadcom and Qualcomm for a long time. Before Tuesday's close, Broadcom and Qualcomm shares fell 2.3% and 1.1% respectively.
"This is almost equivalent to installing the computing power of the MacBook Pro into an iPhone," said Tim Millet, an executive of Apple chips. The iPhone Air will use dual cameras and cancel the physical SIM card slot to leave more space for the battery.Apple said that the basic version of the iPhone 17 will be equipped with a brighter and more scratch-resistant screen, and the front camera will also be upgraded, making the horizontal selfie better.
AirPods Pro3 will support real-time language translation. If both parties to the conversation wear the headset, the system can achieve nearly real-time two-way translation.
The blood pressure monitoring function still requires regulatory approval. Although the watch cannot detect all cases of hypertension, it is expected to provide early warnings to 1 million people and launch the feature in 150 countries, Apple said.
