Not that customers have stopped buying the “declining” iPhone, by any means, but Apple would love to correct the perception that it’s stopped innovating in the smartphone space. As if stung by Mark Zuckerberg’s dubious criticisms, Apple will make a big push in 2025 to restore the iPhone’s momentum.
The focus of 2025 will of course be the flagship iPhone launches in September, where (as usual) we will get four new models, but (as not usual) one of them will be super-thin and probably branded as the iPhone Air. In the latest edition of his Power On newsletter, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman acknowledges that the slim model may not sell more units than its chunkier siblings, but insists it will get people talking. And that’s the point.
The key comparison for the iPhone 17 Air is against the mini models from the iPhone 12 and 13 series, and the Plus models from 14, 15, and 16. Apple knows how to sell the standard iPhone (gets the job done), iPhone Pro (connoisseur’s choice), and iPhone Pro Max (the Rolls-Royce of the line), but the fourth model in the set has historically been a market challenge.
The iPhone 12 and 13 mini sold so poorly that category was dropped. The Plus models must have done at least somewhat better, given that they’ve lasted one whole generation longer (and some of us think they’re neat), but Apple will want more from the Air. More sales, ideally, but above all more hype. By creating the thinnest iPhone ever–about 2mm thinner than the existing models, according to Gurman’s sources, which is roughly a 25 percent reduction–it wants customers to remember why they got excited about their first iPhone, rather than looking dutifully at the specs and trying to decide if they should upgrade their handset in 2025 or wait another year.
Interestingly, however, Apple has a product to get out the door long before the iPhone 17 Air that is in many ways the polar opposite. The 4th-gen iPhone SE is expected to arrive in the spring and while it won’t get as much interest from the media or marketing spend from Apple, it holds the key, as a comparatively affordable smartphone with an A18 processor, to taking Apple Intelligence into the mainstream.
If pundits including Gurman are correct, it will also complicate matters slightly regarding the iPhone 17’s sales pitch. Apple’s first in-house modem, codenamed Sinope, makes its first appearance this year… not in the iPhone 17, but in the iPhone SE. That probably means improved battery performance, but you won’t need to pay the big bucks to get it. Unusually generous or short-sighted? That’s debatable.
But Gurman definitely thinks Apple has one eye on the future. The use of proprietary components–both Sinope and a new Wi-Fi/Bluetooth chip called Proxima–will pay off in future products, while the iPhone Air specifically could hold the key to finally tackling the foldables market. “To fold, iPhones and iPads will need to have bodies and displays that are as thin as possible,” Gurman writes, “and the Air is a step toward that.”
This is a big year for the iPhone, then. But Apple will hope it’s the first of many.