Apple’s “Wonderlust” event to Tuesday featured the new iPhone 15 family, Apple Watch Series 9, and Apple Watch Ultra 2 at prices unchanged from a year ago. Longtime Apple analyst Gene Munster, now Managing Partner at Deepwater Asset Management, says that while “most of these updates were incremental,” they’re enough to attract the 400 million iPhone owners with devices that are more than 4 years old, which should return Apple to revenue growth in the December quarter.
Gene Munster for Deepwater Asset Management:
Most impressive was the addition of spatial photo and video capability on iPhone 15 Pro models, which lays the foundation for Vision Pro demand, due out early next year.
Spatial video will change how people recollect memories. That’s a bold prediction and one that I feel confident in after demoing Vision Pro back in June. Spatial video was the feature that jumped out as something everyone will love.
The step up from current video to spatial video is as big as the step from still photos to video a hundred years ago.
This is the first killer feature on Vision Pro and it will change how people recollect memories. I believe that spatial video is so good, that it will drive sales of the pricey $3,500 Vision Pro.
iPhone pricing remained unchanged across the product family with a small tweak: The lowest capacity version of the Pro Max (128GB) is no longer available. As a result, the entry-level version of the Pro Max is now $1199.
We think that maintaining pricing is the right move. Apple has perfected the price-to-value curve since the iPhone launched in 2007 — a pricing lineup that encourages buyers to trade up. That dynamic remains intact.
MacDailyNews Take: Munster is right, as he often is. With iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max adding the ability to record spatial video for Apple Vision Pro, it will not only drive Vision Pro sales, but also additional iPhone 15 Pro sales (for the most tuned-in customers at first, until word spreads to the hoi polloi) and push up iPhone ASP as people increasingly choose the high-end iPhone models for exclusive features like spatial video.
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A strong NEW lineup that extends back to the older models still available as “new.” iPhone 13 hangs on but iPhone 13 mini appears to be gone from online Apple Store (except maybe on refurb page). So a great time to give it the “SE” treatment and re-introduce it (Spring 2024) with updated specs (A16 and USB-C), as simply “iPhone mini” for a three-year run 😏 Price it $100-150 more than last year’s iPhone SE (3), which is still in lineup starting at $429.