Interface News Reporter | Wu Yangyu
On September 20th, nearly two weeks after the press conference, the Apple iPhone 16 series officially went on sale.
In the early morning of the same day, Shanghai was in heavy rainstorm due to the typhoon. Consumers who were ready to pick up new mobile phones held umbrellas and waited outside the Jing'an store of the Apple Store. There were about a hundred people in the queue.
At eight o'clock, the store door officially opened, and the pick-up teams on the upper and lower floors quickly formed.
Apple Jing'an Store (Reporter's Photo)
A consumer who has finished picking up the goods told Interface News reporters that he purchased the 1T version of the iPhone 16 Pro Max this time, and he is an Apple FamilyMart user who switched from the iPhone XS Max. The reason why he made up his mind to replace the camera this year is because his child was recently born and he wants to purchase a device with good imaging ability to take photos for his child.
He said that he made the decision after watching the press conference, and then entered the official website to place the order on time when the pre-sale started, and the payment was successful within about 5 minutes. He actually experienced the iPhone 16 Pro Max in the store, and for the camera control focus of this update, he believes that landscape photography is better to control than portrait photography, but the overall button control is not yet suitable, and it requires a habitual cycle in the later stage.
In terms of price, as he uses a credit card 24 month installment payment method, he believes that his sensitivity to pricing will not be too high.
Another consumer purchased two new iPhones, namely iPhone 16 Pro and Pro Max, both of which are 512GB versions. She stated that one Pro Max is for personal use and the other will be given to her family. Her last phone was the iPhone 15 Pro, and she changed it relatively frequently because her hobby was watching concerts, so she hoped that her filming equipment would always be the latest.
She told Interface News reporters that she chose the iPhone 16 Pro Max because she was interested in the latest imaging feature update, and at the same time, the audio processing update of this model also attracted her. In this year's product upgrade, Apple has added the ability to process different audio tracks to the video editing feature of the Pro series. In the context of concert filming, this means that users may reduce the surrounding vocals and noise, highlighting the voices of performers on stage.
In addition, the improved battery life of the iPhone 16 Pro series and the improved heat dissipation during video recording are also factors considered in her consumption decision.
However, multiple users, including the two aforementioned consumers, have stated that AI features represented by Apple Intelligence are not their primary purchasing purpose. Some people believe that some of the AIGC generation functions showcased by Apple at the press conference are not yet essential for their work, and for more daily search needs, their usage habits are still limited to more traditional search engines or content apps.
In fact, this is also a common dilemma for most AI smartphones at present, as manufacturers are still looking for feature updates that can more deeply hit consumers' pain points. Some in the industry believe that the iPhone 16 series is already a product with higher completion in the market, but there is still a certain distance to go before there is a real demand explosion.
Apple Jing'an Store (Reporter's Photo)
From a rush buying perspective, every year when a new iPhone is released, the most anticipated is always the new color version of the Pro series, just like last year's titanium original color. This is also a hot commodity that scalpers are betting on.
Therefore, the Desert Gold version of the iPhone 16 Pro series is the absolute protagonist of this year. A scalper told Interface News reporters that this year's iPhone 16 Pro Max Desert Gold 1T version is priced at an additional 2500 yuan, and the 512GB version is priced at an additional 1000 yuan. In addition, the Desert Gold 1T version of iPhone 16 Pro is priced at an additional 1000 yuan, and the 512GB version is priced at an additional 500 yuan. The price increase for other color versions of the iPhone 16 Pro series is generally lower.
In addition, the iPhone 16 series, which is considered to be more cost-effective than the Pro series this year, has not been priced by scalpers.
In fact, unlike the Pro models that have received more attention in previous years, the basic version may be a more worthwhile research object for this year's iPhone 16 series. On the one hand, in order to better implement AI intelligent systems, Apple directly upgraded the chips of two iPhone 16 series models across generations to the A18 bionic chip; On the other hand, the hardware upgrade of the iPhone 16 series focuses on camera control buttons, which are also upgraded synchronously across the entire series. In the iPhone 15 series, the newly added custom function buttons were only available in the Pro version at that time.
This means that the difference between iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Pro is not as significant as in the past, and the pricing advantage of the former may make it a more prominent high-volume model this year.
This may be a key sales strategy. Due to the AI feature not being launched synchronously with the iPhone 16 series, some analysts have pointed out that the iPhone 16 Pro series is lower than expected, and the estimated pre order sales of the iPhone 16 series in the first weekend are about 12.7% lower than last year's iPhone 15 series.
In this situation, the observation period of the iPhone 16 Pro series may be extended, and currently, the two models of iPhone 16 may be the core products that support the sales of the new iPhone.