There was a time when thickness and weight were two main questions when buying new technology, maybe even the most important. That is why, when Apple founder Steve Jobs slipped a MacBook Air out of an envelope in 2008, we all oohed. It was a new dawn for laptops: finally some mercy for the world’s shoulders.
There were some performance trade-offs, but they were seen as worth it. The MacBook Air redefined expectations of how a laptop could look and feel, and it only got better from there. As well as MacBook Air, by 2013 we had the iPad Air, too.
Continuing the trend on Tuesday, Apple Inc introduced the 5.64mm-thick iPhone Air to answer those critics who said that at 7.95mm, the new iPhone 17 is too thick, a certified whopper. If you could locate any of those critics, please send them to me, because I do not believe they exist. Nor do I believe many consumers would care about thickness when they learn the iPhone Air sacrifices things they worry about more than any other factor: battery life and a more capable camera.
These consumers also care about price. At US$999, the iPhone Air comes in at US$200 more than the more powerful 17, or just US$100 less than the full-featured 17 Pro. Is that a good deal to achieve thinness when you are only going to stick this phone into a case immediately anyway? This is one of the stranger products Apple has ever released. The company did not elaborate on what it meant by “all-day battery life,” but here is a clue: Alongside the launch of the device, Apple showed off an accompanying external battery pack for “life’s busier days.” (It is US$99.)
So what is the deal? International Data Corp (IDC) analyst Francisco Jeronimo said that the design refresh — which includes a new look for the other iPhones in addition to the iPhone Air — is about shortening the amount of time consumers wait to upgrade their devices, which has been trending longer and longer, as the phone and its components have improved and the phones have started to look very similar from one year to the next.
As CCS Insight chief of research Ben Wood put it: “It has been a few years since Apple has had new iPhones that you could put on the table in a coffee shop, meeting room or pub, and people would ask, ‘Is that the new iPhone?’”
So it was good news if that is the sort of thing that matters to you: The new Pro lineup looks distinctly different from the models of the past few cycles, with its massive new camera bump — the company called it a “plateau” — and distinct new colors.
On matters of thinness, Jeronimo points to Samsung’s S25 Edge — 5.8mm — which sold more than a million units in the second quarter, making it the sixth-most popular smartphone globally in IDC’s “high-premium” category of US$1,000 to US$1,600 — although online reviews, professional and from regular people, bemoan the poor battery performance.
Those kind of sales numbers would be table stakes for Apple, but the S25 Edge at least signals an audience for thinner phones, Jeronimo said.
The iPhone Air, then, might be a consumer-testing and market research opportunity for Apple ahead of some truly large upgrades coming next year. The iPhone Air makes use of Apple’s own wireless chip and modem. Spinning up the supply chain that produces them would be useful as Apple prepares for products such as the highly anticipated folding iPhone, which would ultimately feel like two iPhones fused together. That device, far more than anything on show today, would be what gets people upgrading their iPhone more quickly.
All this leaves the iPhone Air as a niche product, built for those who simply must buy every new Apple product or those who wear their jeans too tight (there is probably plenty of overlap in that particular Venn diagram). Like the experimental Vision Pro — another case of Apple doing a little research and development, and market research out in the open — it is perhaps less about this first version of iPhone Air and more about the second one.
As Apple CEO Tim Cook wrapped up the launch event on Tuesday, Apple’s shares were trading marginally down — about 1.5 percent. It was a muted response from investors who know the real litmus test of Apple’s strategy — on artificial intelligence and the future of the iPhone — would not come until next year.
Dave Lee is Bloomberg Opinion’s US technology columnist. He was previously a correspondent for the Financial Times and BBC News.
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