Apple Prepares 20th Anniversary Edition iPhone for 2027
Multiple English media outlets cite supply chain sources stating that Apple plans to launch a 20th Anniversary Edition iPhone by the end of 2027, along with a new generation of foldable iPhones and AirPods with built-in cameras in late 2027.
Reports indicate that the new AirPods with cameras will be Apple's first AI-interaction-centric wearable device, with embedded cameras and sensors to capture the user's surroundings and relay information to Siri or local AI models for scene understanding and command recognition.
Insiders reveal that Apple is developing several self-designed chips using more advanced processes and packaging technologies for upcoming iPhones, wearables, and smart glasses, aiming to launch its first lightweight smart glasses by the end of next year. This will create an integrated spatial computing and AI terminal combination with the Vision series headsets and camera-equipped AirPods, as industry funding shifts towards high-end packaging and sensing modules.
Source: Public Information
ABAB AI Insight
From historical trends, Apple often employs a "milestone + form leap" strategy: the original iPhone in 2007 initiated the capacitive touch era, while around 2017, it reshaped high-end standards with full screens and Face ID. Now, linking the 20th anniversary with foldable screens, all-glass bodies, and spatial computing terminals essentially replicates the pricing and product structure upgrade path of the "iPhone X," turning a hardware form update into a ten-year ecological lock-in window.
On the capital path, the camera-equipped AirPods and lightweight smart glasses indicate that Apple no longer views wearables as accessories to the iPhone, but as "AI perception front ends" and "spatial computing entry points": chip investments are extending from traditional SoCs to infrared/environmental cameras, low-power AI acceleration, and advanced packaging. Supply chain funding will shift from mid-to-low-end acoustic modules to high-margin sensing and packaging nodes, similar to the profit redistribution from feature phone components to smartphone cameras, OLEDs, and packaging in the past.
In contrast, Meta's focus on "social + AR" through Ray-Ban smart glasses and Quest headsets aims for a traffic entry point, while Apple is attempting to build a high-end closed-loop ecosystem of "multi-terminal collaboration" through the 20th Anniversary iPhone, foldable iPhone, Vision series, and AI headphones. This approach is closer to the combination of iPod + iTunes to iPhone + App Store, but this time the core is not the app store, but the AI inference capabilities and data closed loop on the device side, which may diminish the influence of mid-range Android manufacturers in high-value AI scenarios.
Structurally, this round appears to be a "return of pricing power from cloud computing vendors to terminal hardware manufacturers": once a large amount of AI inference shifts to local chips equipped with HBM or advanced packaging, cloud-side large model calls will more often retreat to "backup computing," while terminal manufacturers, leveraging device installation volumes, sensing data, and local model capabilities, will regain control over experience and pricing structures, forming technical synergies with upstream wafer foundries and packaging factories, and creating new platform dependencies for downstream application developers.
ABAB News · Cognitive Law
Form upgrades are just the surface; the migration of pricing power is the underlying script.
First occupy the perception entry, then discuss AI computing power; if the order is wrong, one will be subjected to platform rent.
The real high margins are not in the whole machine, but in the overlooked packaging and sensing links.