Apple on Tuesday rolled out its next generation of iPhones that includes a new ultra-thin model and a slight price hike for one of its high-end models, while the company feels the squeeze of a global trade war.
The iPhone 17 lineup includes a new slimmed-down model that will adopt the “Air” name Apple already uses for its sleekest iPads and Mac computers. In what has become an annual rite for Apple, all four new iPhone 17 models will feature better cameras and longer-lasting batteries than last year’s lineup.
The iPhone 17 will all boast at least 256 gigabytes of storage, doubling the minimum amount from the last generation.
“We are raising the bar again,” Apple CEO Tim Cook boasted in front of a crowd gathered in an auditorium named after the company’s late co-founder, Steve Jobs, located on its campus in Cupertino, Calif.
The new iPhones are the first to be released since U.S. President Donald Trump returned to the White House and unleashed a barrage of tariffs, in what his administration says is an attempt to bring overseas manufacturing back to the U.S. — a crusade that has thrust Cook into the hot seat.
All the iPhone 17 models are still expected to be made in Apple’s manufacturing hubs in China and India, exposing them to some of Trump’s tariffs.
Analysts say the additional fees on iPhones coming into the U.S. increase the pressure on Apple to raise prices to help protect its profit margins on its most marquee product.
In Canada, Apple will charge $1,599 for the iPhone 17 Pro, an increase of $150 from previous versions of that model. The iPhone Air will start at $1,449 — the price of last year’s iPhone 16 Pro.
The starting price for the basic iPhone 17 is $1,129 and the iPhone 17 Pro Max at $1,749.
All four models will be in stores Sept. 19.
Apple’s shares fell nearly two per cent in Tuesday’s late afternoon trading.
In a move aimed at the selfie culture, the iPhone 17 models will feature a front camera with more megapixels for crisper photos. The front camera will also have an option called “Center Stage” that will take advantage of a wider view of field and a new sensor that will enable users to take landscape photos without having to rotate the iPhone.
Although most of the upgrades to the iPhone 17 are similar to the incremental improvements of recent years, Apple appears to have done enough to “bring a sense of newness to the iPhone, which has remained the same for too long,” said PP Foresight analyst Paolo Pescatore.
While the iPhone 16 released last year fared reasonably well, the models didn’t sell quite as well as analysts had anticipated because Apple failed to deliver all of the artificial intelligence features it had promised, including a smarter and more versatile Siri assistant. The Siri improvements have been pushed back until next year.
The global trade war has compounded Apple’s challenges.
Both Trump and U.S. Commerce Secretary Howard Lutnick have repeatedly insisted that iPhones be made in the U.S. instead of overseas. It’s an unrealistic demand that analysts say would take years to pull off and would result in a doubling, or even a tripling, of the iPhone’s current average price of about $1,000 US.
Cook tried to placate Trump by initially pledging that Apple would invest $500 billion in the U.S. over the next four years, and then upped the ante last month by adding another $100 billion to the commitment. He also gifted Trump a statue featuring a 24-karat gold base.
That kind of diplomacy has helped insulate Apple from Trump’s most severe tariffs. However, with the iPhones being brought into the U.S. still facing duties of about 25 per cent, some analysts speculated the company would raise prices to help preserve its heft profit margins. But for the most part, Apple — and even rivals such as Google — is sticking with the same price tags it’s slapped on its newest iPhones over recent years.
Although Apple’s stock price is still down by four per cent so far this year, the shares have been bouncing back in recent months amid signs it won’t be as hard hit by the tariffs as once feared, and a highly anticipated court ruling cleared the way for the company to continue receiving $20 billion US annually to lock in Google’s search engine as the default option on iPhones.