Apple Preps for March 4 Product Launch

The iPhone maker will hold that event on March 4, Bloomberg News reported Monday (Feb. 16), citing an invitation from the company. Apple is planning to announce several new devices in the coming weeks, the report added.

The invitation applies to gatherings in New York, Shanghai and London, with Apple saying it is hosting an in-person “experience.” According to Bloomberg, this implies a lower-key showcase than the usual launches held at Apple’s Silicon Valley headquarters.

The report also notes that Apple has been planning to debut several new products during the first half of this year. These include new MacBook Pros, MacBook Airs, a low-cost MacBook in a variety of colors and new iterations of the iPad, as well as the iPhone 17e.

In other Apple news, PYMNTS CEO Karen Webster wrote recently about some of the challenges facing Apple—and its fellow tech giants—including the company’s struggles on the AI front.

“The decision to partner with Google and use Gemini as the backbone for a dramatically upgraded Siri is regarded as a Hail Mary move designed to shore up Apple’s weakest flank and preserve the relevance of the iPhone and Services ecosystem,” she wrote. “But it also confirms that Apple is renting intelligence rather than owning it. AI, in this configuration, is a defensive layer wrapped around an existing business model, not a force reshaping it.”

As PYMNTS wrote late last month following Apple’s latest earnings call, CEO Tim Cook has framed Apple Intelligence—the company’s AI system—less as a standalone offering more as “an operating-system-level capability that can raise the value of its entire ecosystem and, by extension, create room to monetize across hardware and services.”

He noted early usage and practical features rather than employing grand “AI platform” rhetoric, stressing that the experience is meant to be “personal” and “private,” woven into the way customers already use iPhone.

That framing was important when analysts posed to him the most investor-friendly AI question: where’s the revenue upside? Cook didn’t place a price tag on AI features, but he did draw a line to broader opportunities for monetization.

“We’re bringing Intelligence to more of what people love,” he said. “And we’re integrating it across the operating system in a personal and private way. And I think that by doing so it creates great value and that opens up a range of opportunities across our products and services.”