Apple’s next iPhone will catapult the tech pioneer into the AI ​​era

Apple’s omnipresence iPhone is about to break new ground with a shift towards artificial intelligence which will do everything from making your often dumb assistant smarter Siri to create custom emojis on the fly. The new era will begin on Monday with the unveiling of the long-awaited iPhone 16 at an auditorium in Cupertino, California, named after Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who unveiled the first iPhone in 2007 and waved it like a magic wand as he predicted it would transform society.

Since then, Apple has sold billions of iPhones, helping to generate some $3 trillion in wealth for its shareholders. But the past decade has seen mostly minor upgrades from one model to the next, a factor that has kept people from buying a new iPhone and led to a recent drop in sales of Apple’s flagship product.

The iPhone 16 is creating more buzz because it is the first model designed specifically for AIa technology that is expected to trigger the biggest revolution in the industry since Jobs introduced Apple to the smartphone market 17 years ago.

The advancements included in the iPhone 16 could make Apple “the gatekeeper of the consumer AI revolution,” Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives wrote in a research note.

Apple’s change of course began three months ago with a preview of its new approach during a developers conference, helping build anticipation for Monday’s unveiling.

Since that June conference, competitors like Samsung and Google have made even further strides in AI. Google even made the unusual decision to unveil its latest Pixel phones packed with its own AI wizardry last month instead of sticking to its traditional October schedule, in an attempt to upstage Apple’s iPhone 16 launch.

In an attempt to differentiate itself from early AI leaders, the technology being built into the iPhone 16 is being touted as “Apple Intelligence.” Still, Apple Intelligence is similar to the generically named AI already available on Google’s Pixel 9 and the Samsung Galaxy S24 released in January. Most of Apple’s AI tasks will be done on the iPhone itself rather than in remote data centers — a distinction that requires a special processor in upcoming models and the high-end iPhone 15 models that launched a year ago.

Investors are therefore expecting strong demand for the iPhone 16, leading to a surge in sales that has pushed Apple’s stock price up 13% since Apple unveiled its AI strategy in June. That surge has increased the company’s market value by nearly $400 billion.