iPhone 16 sees stronger sales than iPhone 15—thanks to Apple Intelligence?

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Not every iPhone launch outperforms launch sales of the prior model. That’s the a problem for the iPhone 16 family, however. Apple CEO Tim Cook tells Susan Li that the latest phones are selling in higher volumes than the iPhone 15 family during the same time last year. Perhaps surprisingly to some is the reason: Apple Intelligence.

That’s based on Cook saying that “of course those countries that we have launched Apple Intelligence had stronger year over year performance than the countries where we did not.” That’s a nice way to say that the iPhone 16 launch did not impress in China where Apple Intelligence is not yet offered.

Is the early suite of Apple Intelligence features actually converting into more iPhone 16 sales?

Remember that the iPhone 16 lineup originally launched with zero Apple Intelligence features. You wouldn’t know that based on the aggressive marketing saying that “Apple Intelligence is here.”

Once Apple did release the first set of Apple Intelligence features — focused on improving writing and a new Siri design — it still lacked many of the advertised features like Genmoji, image creation, and ChatGPT integration.

More recently, Apple has offered most of what Apple Intelligence in year one consists of, but there are still major Siri features promised for iOS 18 that Apple Intelligence doesn’t include yet.

Meanwhile, Cook says that Apple Intelligence will reach more countries in April. That’s when we expect iOS 18.4 to be ready. That release should include the new Siri features that let the virtual assistant use content in context from your iPhone to complete requests.

Separately, Cook somewhat addressed DeepSeek, the Chinese AI firm that has rocked companies like NVIDIA and OpenAI.

I think it’s great… that efficiency is a great thing, and innovation that drives efficiency is a great thing. We’ve always had this hybrid model on investment, as you know, in the data center space, where we have our own data centers, and then we also use third parties. And so I think we’re going to continue on that strategy.

Hopefully Cook expands on those thoughts on the call with analysts next.