The iPhone Air is Apple’s attempt to make smartphones exciting again

New York — Sharper cameras, larger screens, and longer battery life have characterized yearly smartphone advancements for the greater part of the past ten years.

However, Apple believes that this may no longer be sufficient to impress customers.

The iPhone Air, the company’s first significant redesign of its flagship product in almost ten years, was unveiled on Tuesday. During the company’s keynote address, an Apple official said it was “so thin and light, it seems to disappear in your hands.

The release of the iPhone Air coincides with a need to update both Apple’s popular product and smartphones in general. After years of declining sales, which were partly caused by a lack of attractive new features, the smartphone market has finally recovered. This indicates that customers are keeping their devices for extended lengths of time.

There was increased pressure on Apple to deliver with the iPhone Air and iPhone 17 lineup after launch weekend sales of the iPhone 16 were predicted to be lower in 2024 than the year before.

For over ten years, analysts have been anticipating an upgrade “supercycle” similar to the one Apple went through with the iPhone 6, one of the company’s most successful phones ever.

Although it’s uncertain if the iPhone Air would assist Apple in achieving that goal, some analysts are hopeful that a stylish new iPhone will convince customers to upgrade more than the incremental changes of previous years. More significantly, the new gadget might influence Apple’s future plans for the iPhone.

The largest design change since the iPhone X is represented by the new iPhone 17 series. This alone is a compelling argument for people to upgrade,” International Data Corporation analyst Francisco Jeronimo wrote in an email on Tuesday.

Slow smartphone sales

According to IDC, the smartphone market is emerging from a difficult period. In the fourth quarter of 2022, sales had their biggest drop in a single quarter due to weak demand. According to Counterpoint Research, another significant company that monitors smartphone shipments worldwide, the smartphone industry declined for eight straight quarters in 2023.

The scenario is different in 2025; according to the IDC, sales increased by 1.4% year over year in the second quarter of this year, but demand is still being hampered by unemployment, inflation, and tariff uncertainties.

It’s true that consumers are keeping their gadgets longer; according to Morgan Stanley, smartphone replacement cycles might last up to five years in 2026, with a recent estimate of 4.7 years. In 2024, the CEO and chairman of Verizon told CNBC that customers were keeping their phones for “way over 36 months,” which he called “very long.

“We recall the days when we replaced our phones annually,” he remarked. “Those were thrilling times.

According to Consumer Intelligence Research Partners, when customers do upgrade, it’s usually due to necessity rather than a desire for new features and technology. 68% of American smartphone customers upgrade their phones because they need to replace them, such as because the battery life is too short or the screen is damaged, according to the company that monitors the purchasing patterns of US consumers.

Tech companies, who have been attempting to revive interest in smartphones for years, are aware of this reality. Preorders for the most recent Galaxy Z Fold and Z Flip, which were released in July, jumped by more than 25% over the prior model, according to Samsung, which introduced its first folding phone in 2019.

Since Samsung was one of the first smartphone manufacturers to introduce a foldable phone, almost all of the big Android players—including Motorola, Google, and Chinese tech behemoths like Oppo—have done the same.

Although Apple hasn’t yet released a foldable phone, the company has spent the last ten years expanding its line of wearable technology and digital services in anticipation of a time when customers won’t be lining up to purchase iPhones. While Apple’s digital services division is currently its second-largest company after the iPhone, recent legal disputes have put Apple’s dominance in jeopardy. These areas have served as a buffer to satisfy investors during times of slow iPhone growth.

How the iPhone Air could make the iPhone exciting again

Apple is delivering an iPhone that looks and feels significantly different for the first time in almost ten years. Although the iPhone’s design varies slightly from year to year, it hasn’t changed much since Apple introduced the iPhone X in 2017—the first model with a bigger screen and Face ID in place of the home button.

Customers who want a phone that feels new but don’t care about camera upgrades or larger screens may find the iPhone Air appealing despite its shortcomings as compared to the iPhone 17 and 17 Pro (it only has one camera, for example).

In a research note on Tuesday, Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives identified “bold redesigns” as a factor that could lead to an increase in iPhone upgrades over the next 12 to 18 months. He estimates that 315 million of the 1.5 billion iPhone users worldwide haven’t upgraded their device in four years and are due for a refresh.

The daring new look of the iPhone Air, according to analysts at market research firm Forrester, may be sufficient to revive interest in the iPhone. The iPhone Air would probably appeal to people who have “been reluctant to upgrade their old models for the lack of a differentiated option,” according to an email sent on Tuesday by Forrester analyst Dipanjan Chatterjee.

The new Air model may also be a sign that Apple is reconsidering the overall design of the iPhone. If Apple ever develops a foldable iPhone, the emphasis on thinness may be advantageous. When closed, phones that fold in half, such as the Google Pixel Pro Fold and Galaxy Z Fold, are typically thicker than regular phones, sometimes looking like two phones stacked on top of each other. Because of this, being thin is even more crucial.

Additionally, the iPhone Air has a new wireless networking processor called the N1, which the company claims would enhance Bluetooth and Wi-Fi performance. If Apple were to produce an iPhone without ports, as sources from Bloomberg have suggested, it could be crucial to improve those kinds of connections because the gadget would be entirely dependent on wireless connectivity. According to a March claim from the financial news agency, if the iPhone Air proves to be successful, Apple may resume development of an iPhone without charging ports.

In light of growing conjecture that emerging AI gadgets, such as smart glasses, may eventually replace some of the primary functions of smartphones, laying the groundwork for a more significant redesign may be crucial. While OpenAI is working with former Apple design leader Jony Ive on an unidentified new AI device, Meta, Google, and Samsung are all investing in smart glasses that can monitor a user’s environment and provide answers.

This does not imply that smartphones will become obsolete very soon. Just as laptops and desktops are still widely used even if they are no longer the main way people access the internet in the mobile era, it is more possible that the way people use smartphones will alter if technologies like smart glasses become popular.

Apple’s senior vise president of services, Eddy Cue, stated in court during the Google search antitrust trial that “you may not need an iPhone 10 years from now,” indicating that the business is aware of that possible shift, according to Bloomberg.

The iPhone Air may be a precursor of an Apple smartphone designed for that time period.