iPhone 16 launches in Apple stores

However, there’s been a lot of excitement about the improvements to the base iPhone 16, which comes in a few new saturated colors and becomes two new buttons — Camera control and an action button.

The Singapore scene

At Apple’s Singapore flagship store in Orchard, the city’s central shopping district, the scene had the hallmarks of Apple product launches: a countdown to the store’s opening, long lines outside the store and store employees cheering on the first batch of customers as come in

Queues started at 4am and were split into pre-order pickups and walk-in orders.

The store opened at 8 am. When Business Insider visited the store at 9 a.m., there were about 300 people queuing for orders.

By 9 a.m., the store was surrounded by resellers who had bought two iPhones — the maximum you can pre-order — and were looking to buy more from those buying replacement parts.

Many of these resellers traveled to Singapore from Vietnam and Sri Lanka, where Apple has no official stores, or from India, where Apple has two stores. Some people carried eight to 12 cargo bags and came with carry-on suitcases to carry the iPhones back home.

BI spoke to a Singaporean couple in their mid-20s who said it was their first time attending an Apple launch day. They pre-ordered the iPhone 16 for themselves and their friends. They kept two phones but sold them to buyers who approached them on the street.

The Singaporean buyer said it flipped each additional phone to a Vietnamese group for a profit of S$150, or $116 apiece. He took time off work to pick up his order at 8am

“There’s not that much profit in it, it was more for fun,” he said.

Another iPhone enthusiast who spoke to BI said he attended launch days in 2011, just before the Orchard flagship store opened in 2017. He said he upgrades his iPhone every year.

He said Friday’s crowd was a little quieter than it has been in the past. He said he hopes Apple will design a flip phone similar to those made by Samsung and Huawei, so he can have an “iPad in his pocket”.

A lot is riding on this release for Apple. iPhone sales fell year-over-year in Q3, and analysts said an AI-powered smartphone could be the game changer Apple needs to get revenue back on track. However, last weekend’s pre-orders were estimated to be around 13% lower than for the iPhone 15 – primarily due to the slower rollout of AI features as well as competition from China.

Apple has successfully generated hype around its upcoming software, but today could indicate whether it can back it up with initial hardware sales.