Apple Event 2024 – Bringing Apple Intelligence to Market

For fans, consumers and enterprise professionals, the arrival of autumn means only one thing - the hope for new Apple gear.

The annual Apple keynote show (It’s Glowtime 2024!) has shown the world the much-anticipated iPhone 16 range along with some other minor updates, but for businesses interests the important reveals centered around new productivity applications and Apple’s own entry to the Artificial Intelligence market.  

No big gear

The iPhone has been Apple's world-dominating device for almost two decades, but the market has been tending towards saturation for the last several versions of the flagship phone. The hardware is a victim of its own success (and price point) as businesses are keeping their iPhones for much longer than they did with previous generations. This has led at best to stagnation, and at worst some bad press revolving around built-in obsolescence and unfriendly repair policies.     

Although Glowtime 2024 didn’t have any radically new hardware to show (disappointing enthusiasts who had been hoping for the Apple Watch Ultra 3) it did spotlight Apple Intelligence, the AI tools that will only be available on iPhone 16 and onwards.

Testing the AI market  

Monetizing AI-powered productivity tools within the enterprise sector has proven to be challenging. Even business leaders with significant cloud-presence like Microsoft and Amazon have had difficulty making meaningful returns on their AI investment.  

Market analysts say that the iPhone 16’s modest hardware improvements likely mean Apple are using this generation to gauge consumer willingness to pay for AI features and businesses’ interest in using them to boost productivity. 

A positive reception will bolster Apple’s confidence in future profitability, signifying a shift in attitudes toward adoption. If people become accustomed to paying for AI enhancements in their digital lives, this could reflect their acceptance of AI-powered tools within a professional context.  

Alternatively, if even the world’s most recognizable tech company's most desirable product fails to convince decision-makers, it will mean a steep climb ahead for AI-inclusion as a whole. 

AI for enterprise  

For professionals, Apple Intelligence features are going to be found ‘wherever you type’ as Craig Federighi, Apple Vice President of Software, put it. The tools shown included a smarter and more context-aware Siri, automated notification summaries, writing assistance, and automatically generated unique emoji from whatever you're typing - which Apple is calling ‘Genmoji’. For highly mobile professionals there may well be interest in getting devices to automatically summarize emails, and saving time with smarter automated replies.   

Something for everyone 

Hardcore hardware fans were not entirely disappointed. The new iPhone 16 will be available as a regular base edition, as well as Plus, Pro, and Pro Max variants – the primary difference being size and screen quality. The Pro has a 6.3" screen and the Pro Max a 6.9", both significantly bigger than previous generations, which Apple CEO and host of the Glowtime event Tim Cook enthusiastically called “...by far our best iPhone displays ever…[and]… the best iPhone battery life ever.” 

Elsewhere at the show, we saw upgrades to the basic AirPods to include noise-cancelling, the Apple Watch Series 10 with a bigger display, tweaks to some existing lines, as well as iOS 18 which will be expanding AI tools to more of Apple's core devices.  

SIMs still here 

For enterprise, the 2024 event was also notable where it didn’t show any changes, namely the nano-SIM card trays on all four new iPhone models. When Apple revealed the iPhone 14 two years ago it had a huge effect on the tech and telco sector as American models came without SIM slots. This represented a huge vote of confidence by Apple in embedded SIM (eSIM) technology, based on the game-changing advantages eSIM has for businesses in terms of security, the ease of carrier switching, cost-efficiency and a host of other benefits.

However, as certain markets still restrict the use of eSIMs, Apple went back to including physical SIM slots, which it’s still doing with the iPhone 16. The days of the physical SIM card may be numbered, but they’ll be with us for at least one more year. To find out a lot more about how eSIMs are an essential enterprise advantage, visit us at 1GLOBAL.   

Wrapping up Glowtime 

From a professional perspective, the overarching theme of the show was that Apple Intelligence will be everywhere and we’re all going to wait and see how much of an everyday productivity tool that becomes. In the meantime, we can all enjoy sleeker hardware, more comfort, and longer battery life. You can watch the full recorded video feed online here.