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The iPhone 16, Apple Watch Series 10, and new AirPods models are now available in Apple Stores.
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Apple Intelligence is expected to roll out in October.
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In Singapore, the launch began with a countdown, applause and long queues.
The new AI iPhone is officially available in Apple Stores, hitting shelves in nearly 60 countries around the world starting Friday.
The iPhone 16 is the first phone to launch in Apple’s new era of artificial intelligence. A new Apple Watch Series 10, an improved Apple Watch Ultra 2 and new AirPods models also made their debut.
While the iPhone 16 won’t come with Apple Intelligence out of the box, it’s one of two generations of iPhones compatible with the software, with the first AI features reportedly rolling out to iOS 18 in October.
Still, there’s plenty of excitement about the improvements to the base iPhone 16, which comes in a number of saturated new colors and is growing in popularity. two new buttons: the camera control and an action button.
Scenes in the shops
In New York, at Apple’s flagship store on Fifth Avenue, CEO Tim Cook made his customary appearance on iPhone launch day.
This year, he was joined by “The Tonight Show” host Jimmy Fallon, who donned a Vision Pro headset and touched Cook’s face while filming video outside the store Friday morning.
RD Alba, a filmmaker who flew in from LA, joined the line outside the store shortly before 6 a.m. and managed to snap a selfie with Cook when he arrived late. He shoots with iPhones and is excited about the camera quality, as well as the improvements to the A18 chip and Apple AI features coming in the coming weeks.
“Apple Intelligence will play a huge role,” he said.
Alba was also in line for the first iPhone in 2007 and received a new one every year.
“I love technology and I want to feel it,” he said.
Another new iPhone 16 owner in New York, Saul Campos, also upgrades his phone every year and is especially excited about the new camera control button.
“I do it mainly for the cameras, because I take a lot of pictures and they are renewed every year,” he says.
At Singapore’s main Apple store in Orchard, the city’s central shopping district, the scene was similar to Apple product launches: a countdown to the store opening, long lines outside and employees cheering on the first customers as they walked in.
The queues started at 4am and were divided into people who could pick up an order in advance and people who could walk straight in.
The store opened at 8 a.m. When Business Insider visited at 9 a.m., there were about 300 people in line to place orders.
By 9am, the store was surrounded by resellers who had purchased two iPhones (the maximum you could pre-order) and wanted to buy more from those who bought backup units.
Many of these resellers traveled to Singapore from Vietnam and Sri Lanka, where Apple does not have official stores, or from India, where Apple has two stores. Some people carried eight to 12 merchandise bags and came with carry-on suitcases to bring the iPhones home.
BI spoke to a Singaporean couple in their mid-20s who said this was their first time attending an Apple launch day. They had pre-ordered the iPhone 16 for themselves and their friends. They kept two phones but sold the rest to buyers who approached them on the street.
The Singaporean shopper said he sold each extra phone to a Vietnamese group for a profit of 150 Singapore dollars, or $116, per person. He took time off work to pick up his order at 8 a.m.
“There’s not much profit in it, it was more for fun,” he said.
Another Apple enthusiast who spoke to BI said he’s been attending launch days since 2011, even before the flagship store in Orchard opened in 2017. He said he updates his iPhone every year.
He said the crowd on Friday was a little less active than before. He said he hopes Apple designs a flip phone similar to those from Samsung and Huawei, so he can have an “iPad in his pocket.”
In London, long lines had been forming outside Apple’s two central stores even before they opened at 8 a.m. The lines separated customers waiting for the new Apple Watch from those wanting to pick up the new iPhone.
At the Apple Store on Regent Street, a customer who was in line at 10 a.m. told BI that the lines had grown so long by 8 a.m. that he had to abandon his attempt to pick up his new iPhone 16 and return later.
By 11am, the queues at the outlet and another in nearby Covent Garden had thinned, and customers could walk into the store within 10 minutes. The Regent Street store was the first Apple store in Europe when it opened in November 2004.
The London customers BI spoke to ranged from die-hard Apple fans eager to get their hands on the latest iPhone, to those simply looking to update an essential gadget.
One customer in line for the iPhone 16 who works in the healthcare AI sector said he wasn’t excited about the new model or the prospects of Apple Intelligence features.
“I just look at it as a phone and email machine,” he said, adding that he was trying to upgrade his four-year-old model. “All the models are pretty much the same to me.”
There were also queues for the new devices in cities such as Mumbai and Hangzhou (China).
The stakes are high for Apple with this launch. iPhone sales fell year-over-year in the third quarter, and analysts say an AI-enabled smartphone could be the game-changer Apple needs to boost revenue.
However, pre-orders are expected to be down 13% this past weekend compared to the iPhone 15, largely due to the slower rollout of AI features and competition in China.
Apple has successfully built hype around its upcoming software, but today could tell whether the company can live up to that hype with its first hardware sales.
Read the original article on Business Insider