As eager customers lined up outside Apple stores in San Francisco on Friday to upgrade to the latest iPhone 16 and 16 Pro, their new purchases a glaring omission.
Apple Intelligence, the AI feature that analysts believe will spark a consumer rush to update their iPhones, with Business Insider previously reporting that the new iPhones wouldn’t come with the feature installed out of the box. The feature — which includes an AI-powered Siri, an image generator and AI-generated emojis — will instead roll out via various software updates starting in October.
Ron Witt, a San Francisco resident and longtime iPhone user who recently upgraded from an iPhone 15 Pro, told Business Insider that Apple Intelligence piqued his curiosity.
“Excited isn’t the right word,” he said. “I think I’m more intrigued.”
For Witt and many customers who spoke to BI, Apple Intelligence wasn’t the primary reason for upgrading.
“For me, it’s always the camera,” Witt says, adding that he’s been using an iPhone since the device launched 17 years ago.
Another customer said his phone was just too old. Some told BI they were just serial upgrades.
In New York, lines formed outside the Apple Store on Fifth Avenue as customers looked to upgrade their old phones and customers scrambled to upgrade to the latest model as quickly as possible.
Saul Campos says he buys a new iPhone every year, and this year was no different.
“I do it mainly for the cameras, because I take a lot of photos and they upgrade them every year,” Campos told BI. He noted that he’s excited about the camera control button, which allows users to slide their finger across it to control the camera, such as zooming in, adjusting the focus or pressing it to take a photo or video.
Outside Apple’s flagship store in Manhattan, Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC on Friday that it’s too early to say how demand will compare to last year, but he did say “everything is excited.”
Experts also said the excitement outside Apple stores was palpable this weekend. In a post on X on Friday, Mark Gurman, Bloomberg’s longtime Apple guru, wrote that “the lines this morning were impressive.”
Despite the lines, the data shows that pre-order sales took a hit this year, possibly due to the absence of Apple Intelligence. Apple supply chain expert Ming-Chi Kuo, who analyzed data on first-weekend pre-order sales, said they were down about 12.7% year-over-year, compared with first-weekend sales of the iPhone 15 series.
Kuo suspects two reasons for the dip. “One of the main factors for the lower-than-expected demand for the iPhone 16 Pro series is that its key selling point, Apple Intelligence, is not available at launch along with the iPhone 16 release,” he wrote in a Medium post. “In addition, the intense competition in the Chinese market continues to affect iPhone demand.”
BofA Global Research also found that all iPhone 16 models globally have shorter delivery times than last year’s iPhone 15 models, indicating lower demand, Reuters reported.
According to the report, the analysis looked at pre-order data from three days after Apple made the new phones available for early purchase. The average global ship time for the iPhone 16 was 7 days compared to 9 days for the iPhone 15. Ship time for the 16 Pro Max was 11 days compared to 19 days for the 15 Pro Max.
However, Gil Luria, Apple analyst for DA Davidson, told Reuters that early pre-order data is negligible and surmised that as AI features are gradually rolled out, “the upgrade cycle will likely happen over the next 12-18 months.”
The extent to which Apple Intelligence will appeal to customers is also questionable.
A survey published on September 4 by Consumer Intelligence Research Partners and reported on by Techradar found that 44% of respondents are upgrading their phone because they feel like it’s “outdated.” Only 18% of respondents said they’re upgrading their phone because of “new features.”
Witt, the SF resident, told BI he remembers the hype surrounding the first iPhone years ago when he was in downtown San Francisco. Apple has since implemented an online ordering system that helps reduce long wait times, but overall, Witt said, nothing compares to the excitement when the first iPhone was released.
“It’s much tamer now,” Witt said.
An Apple spokesperson did not respond to a request for comment sent over the weekend.