00:00Who better to discuss it with than Mark Gurman, who leads our Apple coverage,
00:04and basically broke most of the details prior to yesterday's event anyway.
00:07Start with the basics, iPhone Duo.
00:10We were spot on on the price.
00:12That's probably the big news headline, right?
00:14Just under $2,000, but the specs as well.
00:18Your first impressions and the most notable points of the technology?
00:22My first impression is that this device makes every foldable phone from Samsung,
00:27from Google, from Huawei, anyone else before it look like a toy, look like a prototype,
00:31look like a beta test, basically, because the fit and finish we're seeing here
00:35is new to the foldable industry.
00:38The way that they are putting, they call it, ceramic inserts into the cellular antenna cutouts,
00:44so when you go and try to bend the phone and break it, people who do that,
00:48it's not going to bend in half.
00:49The way they put a special cover glass over the flexible display to hide the crease as much as possible
00:56and make it so your fingernails don't put cuts in the screen.
00:59The fact that they're using titanium around the edges to make the phone more durable.
01:05The fact that it's water and dust resistant, right?
01:07They've hit every checkbox here for it to feel like a normal iPhone, but to also be foldable.
01:13This really has very few compromises other than the lack of the telephoto camera
01:19on the back and battery life to some extent.
01:22It was amazing to get hands-on with it yesterday.
01:26Everyone's first reaction is to say there's no crease, there's no margin,
01:31there's no seam in the middle, not one that the naked eye can see.
01:34I do want to talk about the pricing, Mark.
01:36You said this would be $2,000.
01:38It was, in the end, $1,999.
01:42To what extent has Apple eaten some cost in the environment they're operating in?
01:47But also, if you look at the higher tiers of storage, clearly, there are some handsets out there up beyond
01:53$3,000, too.
01:56So they're eating costs, for sure, because the memory shortage really is having an impact on so many companies,
02:03including Apple, delaying products, paying more for memory, needing to charge customers more.
02:08But they've offset it in two key ways.
02:10One is on the storage tiers.
02:13So you can get the 256 gigabytes for that $2,000 price point.
02:16You can get 512 for the $2,200 price point.
02:20But if you want to go to the higher tiers, you're talking $2,600 for a terabyte and then $3
02:24,200 for 2 terabyte.
02:26So they're charging massive premiums on that storage.
02:30And their thinking is that most people probably aren't going to get the base-level version.
02:34This is an early adopter product for all intents and purposes, and that group of people is going to go
02:39for higher storage tiers.
02:41So they are going to get their margin on that.
02:43The other thing they've done is they've really jacked up pricing on the international customers.
02:48So in the U.S., the $2,000 price point globally is going to be the one everyone's talking about.
02:53But you go internationally, the prices in Canada, the price in Australia, the price in Asia, really sky high.
02:59And if you do some of the conversions, the prices in those other countries, it's not a one-to-one
03:04conversion for what the U.S. price is.
03:06So, for instance, in Australia, there's an $800 Australian dollar premium on top of the converted rate.
03:13So that's how they're making up for that shortfall.
03:17Mark, to me, John Turner's tried to do two things with his first formal keynote as CEO.
03:22Talk about the smartphone being the device for the AI era.
03:26But also, he put a lot of emphasis on your iPhone or whichever OS you're using knows you.
03:32It has your data.
03:33It has your context.
03:34What did you make of that messaging and Mr. Turnus' first full iPhone Day event?
03:40Yeah, I mean, for the first time, you know, Apple came out and showcased a real AI strategy.
03:46Whether it's an AI strategy that I agree with, that you agree with, that anyone agrees with, it doesn't matter.
03:53At least they have a strategy now.
03:54And it's interesting, they haven't really showcased a coherent strategy until now.
03:59He calls it the intelligent personal hub, the phone being the center of everything for artificial intelligence.
04:06It harkens back to their previous intelligent hubs.
04:09That all started with the Mac.
04:11Steve Jobs introduced the Mac as sort of the center of everything, and you have all those peripherals around it.
04:17The iPod, you name it.
04:18Then came iCloud.
04:21iCloud is the center of everything, and the Mac, the iPad, the phone, those are all peripherals around the cloud.
04:26Now, the center of everything is sort of the intelligent hub and the iPhone with everything built around that.
04:32Whether it's your iPad, your Mac, your AirPods, your Apple Watch, and all the AI wearables they're going to have
04:37in the future.
04:37It's all built around AI and the phone.
04:40So it's a pretty interesting strategy.
04:42I do think it's going to work to some extent, but obviously it's still early innings for their AI, and
04:48there's more to come, and there's more to do.
04:50I do think it's going to work to some extent, and there's more to do.
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