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The launch is a critical one for Apple, which has suffered sluggish sales of its smartphones and wearable devices in recent quarters | Photo: Bloomberg
By Mark Gurman
Apple Inc. is planning to hold its biggest product launch event of the year on Sept. 10, when the company will unveil the latest iPhones, watches and AirPods, according to people familiar with the situation.
Though the timing hasn’t yet been announced, the company is making preparations for that date, which falls on a Tuesday, said the people, who asked not to be identified because the plans are private. The unveiling will be followed by the phones going on sale Sept. 20, in line with Apple’s typical approach in recent years.
A representative for Cupertino, California-based Apple declined to comment.
The launch is a critical one for Apple, which has suffered sluggish sales of its smartphones and wearable devices in recent quarters. A Sept. 20 release of the new iPhone 16 would mean some of the device’s revenue is recorded in the current period — Apple’s fiscal fourth quarter — when the company expects sales to grow about 5 per centfrom a year earlier.
A bigger chunk of sales will come the following quarter, which coincides with the holiday season. Analysts have predicted that revenue will climb 7 per centto $128.4 billion in that period.
The iPhone 16 will have larger screens on its Pro models and new camera features, such as a dedicated button for snapping photos. The company also is rolling out a suite of artificial intelligence tools called Apple Intelligence. Overall, though, the phones won’t be vastly different than last year’s models.
Apple’s wearable devices, meanwhile, are due for bigger changes. The Apple Watch Series 10 models will be thinner but include larger screens. And Apple is revamping its AirPods lineup with new low-end and mid-tier versions. For the first time, the company will offer noise cancellation on its mid-level AirPods, and the entry-level model is getting updated for the first time since 2019.
The company is also planning to begin transitioning its Macs over to M4 processors later this year, but Mac updates typically don’t arrive until about a month after the annual iPhone launch.
To that end, the company has ramped up testing of four new Mac models to ensure compatibility with third-party applications, according to developer test logs seen by Bloomberg News. That’s a key step prior to launching the new machines. The Macs that appeared are labeled with the identifiers “16,1,” “16,2,” “16,3” and “16,10.”
They all represent models with base-level versions of the M4 chip. Three of the Macs have 10 total cores in their central processing units, or CPUs, while one low-end version includes eight total cores — a measure of performance. The versions with 10-core CPUs also have 10-core GPUs, or graphics engines. The model with an eight-core CPU, meanwhile, has an eight-core graphics engine. They all have either 16 or 32 gigabytes of memory.
The 10-core CPU has the same specifications as the M4 processor in the iPad Pro, including four high-performance parts and six cores focused on efficiency. But the fourth chip seen in the developer logs only includes eight total cores, split between four high-performance parts and four efficiency cores.
Bloomberg News has reported that a smaller Mac mini, new MacBook Pros and updated iMacs with M4 chips are coming later this year.
First Published: Aug 24 2024 | 8:39 AM IST
