Apple's iPhone 16 May Not 'Fuel A Gold Rush Of Purchases' But Next Iteration Will Likely Return Flagship Product To Meaningful Growth, Says Gurman

Apple, Inc. AAPL fans can’t expect a radical redesign with the iPhone 16, which is scheduled to arrive in the fall, said Bloomberg columnist Mark Gurman on Sunday.

Run-Of-The-Mill: The iPhone will have four variants, likely to be called the iPhone 16, 16 Plus, Pro and Pro Max. and more importantly they won’t have meaningful differentiation from the current versions or add major new features, said Gurman in the latest instalment of his weekly “Power On” newsletter.

Apple Intelligence – the company’s new suite of AI capabilities, will be the big marketing point, the columnist said. While all iPhone 16 models will run Apple Intelligence, the iPhone 15 Pro variant of the previous iteration will come with the technology, he said.

“It's hard to tell how much of an enticement this will be. … I don't think these features alone will be reason to upgrade,” he added.

Among the other changes, Gurman noted that the non-Pro versions of the iPhone 15 will have the Action button, which was made available in the higher-end versions of the iPhone 15. That said, the Apple specialist expects this button becoming redundant when the company rolls out a more customizable Control Center and changeable Lock Screen options in iOS 18.

Gurman flagged the likelihood of a new camera control on the right side of the phone, at least in the new Pros. This will operate like a button on a DSLR camera, allowing users to press in slightly to trigger autofocus, he said, adding that a harder press will take the picture.

A user can also swipe along the button to zoom in and out while shooting photos and videos, Gurman said. He also sees the possibility of slightly bigger screens, with the regular Pro moving to from 6.1 inches to 6.3 inches, Pro Max from 6.7 inches to 6.9 inches.

As is customary of Apple, it will refresh the colors, with the blue likely replaced and the popular rose gold from a few years ago returning, Gurman said. The iPhone 16 will be powered by the A18 chip and all the four models will have 8 gigabytes of memory as that is the minimum needed for running Apple Intelligence, he added.

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Will New iPhones Drive Adoption? Gurman said all these are nice upgrades if you have an older phone but does not make the newer versions “must-haves.” “I don’t expect the new models to fuel a gold rush of purchases for Apple,” he said, adding that the company’s financial guidance suggest the company doesn’t either.

Better Times Ahead: Apple will likely bring a bigger shake-up to the iPhone lineup in 2025, Gurman said. He expects the company to launch a new iPhone SE at the start of 2025, marking the first upgrade to the SE variant since 2022. The Apple specialist sees the new SE variant resembling the iPhone 14 with a “crisper OLED display that stretches across the full device” and potentially coming with the Apple Intelligence.

If the new iPhone SE’s price is lowered to $500, it could be a hot seller, Gurman said.

Apple’s flagship product will get radically different with the iPhone 17, according to Gurman. “But the more important changes will appear next September with the iPhone 17,” he said.

The company will likely offer a new type of smartphone, Gurman said, referring to it as the “fourth iPhone model.”

The approach toward the fourth model this time around will be to have a far thinner design, something like an "Air" version of the iPhone of sorts that sits in between the iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro, he said.

“The sales pitch will probably go like this: If you want something snazzier than a standard iPhone — but don't really need the performance, screen size or cameras of a Pro model — you can get something that looks much cooler while still having the specifications of a regular iPhone,” he added.

The new SE and a slim model will be “good enough” to return the iPhone to meaningful growth in 2025, Gurman said.

Apple ended Friday’s session up 1.37% at $216.24, according to Benzinga Pro data. The stock has gained 12.6% so far this year.

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