{"id":259576,"date":"2026-01-30T16:24:10","date_gmt":"2026-01-30T16:24:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/259576\/"},"modified":"2026-01-30T16:24:10","modified_gmt":"2026-01-30T16:24:10","slug":"apples-record-quarter-shows-that-ai-doesnt-sell-iphones","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/259576\/","title":{"rendered":"Apple\u2019s record quarter shows that AI doesn\u2019t sell iPhones"},"content":{"rendered":"

Apple<\/a> may have just made a great case against AI.<\/p>\n

You may<\/a> have<\/a> heard<\/a>: Apple has been an AI laggard for years. The company\u2019s new AI Siri, which debuted later than other similar products, still struggles to answer basic questions, let alone perform more complicated tasks.<\/p>\n

But that sure hasn\u2019t hurt iPhone sales. <\/p>\n

Apple reported all-time record iPhone revenue<\/a> during its fiscal first-quarter earnings Thursday. What\u2019s been driving those sales? Here\u2019s CEO Tim Cook on the earnings call:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s the display. It\u2019s the camera. It\u2019s the performance. It\u2019s the new selfie camera. It\u2019s the design. The design is beloved. And so, it\u2019s all of these things that come together at once and are producing a very strong product cycle, as witnessed by our December quarter results.\u201d<\/p>\n

Notably absent from that list: AI, Apple Intelligence, or Siri. Sure, the iPhone maker is expected to finally release an AI Siri that integrates personal information and on-screen context \u2014 features it\u2019s been promising<\/a> and largely failing to deliver since June 2024 \u2014 next month<\/a>. And a more chatbot-style Siri, something OpenAI and Google<\/a> have offered for years, is slated to arrive this summer. <\/p>\n

But as we\u2019ve written<\/a> before, AI features \u2014 and new phone features generally \u2014 don\u2019t really drive sales. (For what it\u2019s worth, AI doesn\u2019t appear to sell PCs<\/a>, either.)<\/p>\n

According to the latest data<\/a> from Consumer Intelligence Research Partners<\/a>, only a small segment of iPhone buyers, 14%, bought a new iPhone last year for \u201cnew features.\u201d More people, 19%, purchased a new iPhone because their existing one was lost, broken, or stolen. Nearly half made their purchase because their current phone needed replacing \u2014 say its battery life was failing, the software began slowing down, or the screen was cracked. <\/p>\n

In other words, people aren\u2019t dropping $1,100 \u2014\u00a0the base cost of the iPhone 17 Pro \u2014 for a smarter Siri, let alone the prospect of a smarter Siri in the future. <\/p>\n

What\u2019s more likely happening is that many of the people who bought iPhones during the 2020-21 supercycle are now running into the natural limits of those devices. An iPhone typically lasts about five years, which is roughly how long it\u2019s been since a huge wave of consumers last upgraded.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s not to say AI isn\u2019t useful, or that it won\u2019t eventually become a baseline expectation for new phones. But for now, Apple\u2019s earnings suggest something much less futuristic is driving sales: replacement demand. <\/p>\n

iPhone sales have been going gangbusters without AI because they last and then, eventually, they don\u2019t.<\/p>\n

Of course, Apple\u2019s share price is down 0.8% the morning after it reported record revenue and earnings. Maybe investors are a little more driven by AI hopes and dreams these days than prolific sales and profits. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Apple may have just made a great case against AI. You may have heard: Apple has been an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":259577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[20],"tags":[365,363,364,111,139,69,145],"class_list":{"0":"post-259576","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-artificial-intelligence","8":"tag-ai","9":"tag-artificial-intelligence","10":"tag-artificialintelligence","11":"tag-new-zealand","12":"tag-newzealand","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-technology"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259576","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=259576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/259576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/259577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=259576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=259576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=259576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}