The family of iPhone 16 of Apple It was presented three weeks ago, and went on sale in much of the world this September 20, opening the door for the highest sales months of the year for Apple. But for now this is not shaping up to be a bestseller, according to several expert analysts on the subject.
The first to give the warning signal was Ming-Chi Kuo, an analyst with many years of experience following the company’s sales, and who usually anticipates features that new models will have several months before their debut. In this case, Ming-Chi Kuo estimates that the pre-sale of the first week of the iPhone 16 totaled 37 million devices, 12% less than in the same period for the iPhone 15. Another analyst, Dan Ives, put the number at 40 million, CNN reports.
But what a priori could be a bigger problem is that although for now the best-selling model continues to be the iPhone 16 Pro Max (in the last two years, Apple’s most expensive model was the company’s best-seller) changed the mix, with greater growth in iPhone 16 Plusaccording to Ming-Chi Kuo, which could end up affecting the company’s billing: sales in the first days for the iPhone 16 Pro Max were 16% lower than the same period in 2023; those of the iPhone 16 Pro were reduced by 27 percent.
Although this is far from being a failure, the analyst attributes part of the timidity in sales to the fact that Apple Intelligence, the suite of services based on artificial intelligence that Apple promised for this team, are not yet available, and will arrive in dribs and drabs like a series of updates for iOS 18. Also, that the difference between one model and another is smaller this year than in previous generations.
To this we must add that Xiaomi surpassed Apple and became the second largest cell phone manufacturer in the world in the last quarter (Apple’s lowest in sales, because it is prior to the debut of the new model), according to Counterpoint. This has not happened since 2021.
What does the iPhone 16 bring?
The biggest changes in the iPhone 16 Compared to previous models, beyond the incremental improvements (better processor and camera in the Pro models than in the other two, better battery in all) is, on the one hand, the inclusion in the four models of two additional buttons to those for volume and screen lock: a programmable button that can activate any function of the phone (in previous models it was only included in the Pro) and a button to control the camera, both shooting and zooming and other functions.
The other big change is in the screen sizes: now each model has a different size, 6.1 inches on the iPhone 16; 6.3 inches on the iPhone 16 Pro; 6.7 inches on the iPhone 16 Plus; and 6.9 inches on the iPhone 16 Pro Max.
The first Apple Intelligence tools will arrive in October with an iOS 18 update: above all, with the possibility of the operating system giving us a summary of the notifications that arrive on the phone, with an assistant for writing messages (in the style of what Gemini or ChatGPT offers) and improvements in Siri. The custom emojis and the image generation engine with a description are left for the end of the year, and in March or April the renewal of Siri would be ready, which will have an operation more similar to ChatGPT or Gemini in terms of its dialogue capacity, understanding of context, ability to analyze information on the screen, and more. But The first part will only reach iPhones sold in the United States and configured with the English language; Only in 2025 would it be enabled for Spanish.