Apple has increased its order of the A18 chip for the upcoming iPhones, raising production with TSMC to between 90 million and 100 million units, indicating high expectations for the demand of the iPhone 16 series.

The Taiwanese CTEE report indicates that Apple expects higher demand for its 2024 devices based on the 80-90 million units released for the iPhone 15 series last year.

The introduction of Apple Intelligence on iOS 18 is expected to boost the initial device sales as it necessitates an iPhone 15 Pro or one of the iPhone 16 models to function effectively, leaving iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus owners from the previous year without access to the new Apple AI features unless they upgrade.

New chips for iPhone 16 are the A18 chips.

Last year, the iPhone 15 and iPhone 15 Plus featured the A16 Bionic chip, which is also found in the iPhone 14 Pro models. On the other hand, the iPhone 15 Pro and iPhone 15 Pro Max came with the A17 Pro chip manufactured using the TSMC second-generation 3nm process known as N3E.

All four models of the iPhone 16 series this year are required to have A18 chips made using the N3E process. The A18 chip in the iPhone 16 and iPhone 16 Plus models may likely feature the A17 design Pro used in the iPhone 15 Pro models, despite the switch to N3E.

iPhone 16 Pro and iPhone 16 Pro Max are expected to feature the A18 Pro chip, which is equipped with an upgraded Neural Engine that has additional cores for improved AI and machine learning capabilities.

The default iPhone 16 models can also be updated with 8GB of RAM, instead of the 6GB on iPhone 15 models. This means that all four iPhone 16 models will offer 8GB of RAM, a minimum requirement suggested by Apple to perform extensive language models (the algorithms that feed the AI) locally on the device rather than on the cloud.

Apple is expected to release the iPhone 16 series in mid-September this year, following the pattern of previous years. To learn more, refer to our specific iPhone 16 summaries.