Apple rolled out a suite of new products. Are any of them winners?

At yesterday’s “Awe Dropping” Apple event, the company announced its yearly refresh of the iPhone lineup. The new iPhone 17, iPhone 17 Pro, and iPhone 17 Pro Max were joined by a brand-new addition: the iPhone Air, a super-thin model with tougher glass and a faster processor.

The company also announced an updated Apple Watch line — Series 11, SE3, and Ultra 3 — with new features like 5G, high blood pressure detection, 24-hour battery life, and satellite communication.

To go with, Apple launched new AirPods Pro 3 with AI-powered live language translation, a new heart rate sensor, eight hours of battery life, and improved active noise cancellation.

The iPhone 17 Pro’s $1,099 price tag is a $100 increase from its predecessor, but with double the iPhone 16 Pro’s base storage. The iPhone 17 starts at $799, the iPhone 17 Pro Max starts at $1,199, and the new iPhone Air takes the place of the now defunct iPhone Plus, starting at $999.

While Apple fans no doubt loved it, the market thought the event stunk. Apple shares dipped on the news and were down about 1.4% on the day in afternoon trading.

On average, the tech giant falls 0.4% on the release date of new iPhones and is negative more than 70% of the time, so finishing the day down 1.4% would put this in the bottom third of market receptions to a new iPhone.

The Takeaway

A potentially complicating factor to the aforementioned data is that Apple has often done quite well in the six months leading up to a new iPhone announcement, roughly 5 percentage points better than its typical six-month return. That’s not the case this time, with Apple shares up about 5% over the past six months compared to a typical near 20% advance in the prelude to a new iPhone drop.