John Ternes has begun his second week as CEO of Apple and the company has introduced the first major change to the iPhone since its launch nearly 20 years ago.
Turnus, who took charge of Apple after Tim Cook stepped down, was seen on stage at the company's annual product launch event on Wednesday. Behind them were huge pictures of the first foldable iPhone.
The new iPhone with a book-like design, which has been named Duo, is the largest iPhone till date.
Its starting price in America is 1,999 dollars (about 1 lakh 90 thousand rupees) and it goes up to 3,200 dollars. This is also the most expensive iPhone ever.
Turnus said that the Duo is inspired by the iPad, but he described its folding feature as very intuitive and completely natural.
Work on a foldable phone was going on within Apple for many years.
When opened, the new Duo looks like a small iPad. When folded in half, it looks like a wide-sized iPhone.
Turnus said during the event that Apple did not want to give the same look and feel as other foldable smartphones. According to him, other foldable phones "look like two phones fused together, making the larger screen feel much smaller."
Skip to Most Read Skip to content
most read
finished
He said Duo is "the result of a series of extraordinary innovations that we believe will redefine the experience of using a foldable phone."
Ternus has been directly involved in the development of foldable iPhones. Before being named Cook's successor earlier this year, he had held top positions in Apple's hardware division for several years.
skip ahead podcast
Dinbhar: Same voice, new style
Big news from the country and the world which made headlines.
episode
finished
Ben Wood, chief analyst at technology research firm FDM CCS Insight, said the Turnus promotion may have been deliberately timed to coincide with "probably the biggest iPhone launch in many years."
"Nothing happens by chance at Apple," Wood said.
Creative Strategist analyst Carolina Milanesi, who was at Wednesday's launch, said the attention paid to Turnus made it feel "as if he were a product himself."
The changes to the iPhone's design may go some way to addressing the criticism that Apple has not produced any major product hits or truly exciting innovations since the release of the first iPhone in 2007.
Forrester analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee said, "Foldable phones risk becoming an expensive decoration item in Apple's product portfolio, which will enhance the brand's prestige but will not drive real growth."
Before this, the starting price of the newest iPhone was $900. Apple also introduced the new iPhone 18 Pro Max on Wednesday, whose starting price in America is $ 1,199 (about Rs 1 lakh 14 thousand) and $ 1,299 (about Rs 1 lakh 24 thousand) respectively.
Chatterjee said that the future of foldable iPhones could be similar to Apple's Vision Pro headset. The company had kept its price at $3,699 (about three lakh 52 thousand rupees), but it did not become popular among the buyers. He said, it could become the company's next Apple Watch, which despite not being as popular as the iPhone, is bought by millions of people every year.
The way people have become accustomed to the way iPhones work is also a potential barrier to significant sales of the new design.
"Foldables are interesting devices," Milanesi said. "A lot of people are curious about it, but the real challenge is the process of learning the software and how to use it in going from a traditional phone to a foldable phone."
Wood said that the current foldable smartphones from companies like Samsung and Huawei account for only two percent of the total smartphone sales in the market. According to data and analytics company FDM CCM Insight, despite the potential for increased interest and demand from Apple's foldable phones, its sales are expected to reach only four percent of the total smartphone market in the next decade.
The iPhone is Apple's best-selling product and accounts for more than half of the company's total sales every year.
In recent quarters, the company has said that demand for iPhones is higher than ever. The latest edition of the device has become the company's most successful product launch so far.
The company also gave more information about the upcoming re-launch of its audio and chat assistant Siri. Now it is being called Siri AI.
Starting with iPhone 18, this bot will now be able to search through a variety of information on a person's phone, such as messages and emails, to find information, answer questions, and even perform tasks on the user's behalf.
Some features of Siri AI will also be available on the new Apple Watch. These include the ability to take notes during conversations and transcribe them, if the user turns on this feature.
Ternes described the new AI-enabled capabilities of the iPhone as an "intelligent personal hub" and acknowledged that Apple will use the most personal information about your everyday life.
He stressed that this will all remain private and that AI features will often run "on the device", meaning not through third-party companies. When a feature requires third-party access, the information will remain private even on remote servers or in the cloud, according to Ternus.
"Other people see that data as something to be collected and stored. Even Apple can't access your information," Ternes said.
