Apple CEO Tim Cook celebrating the iPhone 17 launch with crowds of buyers at Apple Fifth Avenue in New York, comparing it to the Super Bowl, calling it Apple's most important day of the year — and insisting tariffs played no part in price rises.
Following the reports of huge crowds at Apple Stores across Australia and China, the first US stores have now opened to sell the iPhone 17 range, new Apple Watches, and AirPods Pro 3. CNBC reporter Steve Kovach at Apple Fifth Avenue says that "the energy here is like 10 times what it was this time last year."
"I can barely hear myself speak," he continued. "There's singing, there's dancing... it's actually pretty wild [and] I haven't seen an iPhone launch like this in the last several years."
Tim Cook and Deirdre O'Brien, Apple's senior vice president of retail, were at Apple Fifth Avenue for the opening. Cook posed for photos and even signed the back of iPhones for autograph hunters as crowds cheered.
"Oh, it feels so exciting, it's our Super Bowl, it's the most important day of the year for us," Cook told CNBC's Jim Cramer. "Everybody comes out from the Apple community, and there's no place I'd rather be than Fifth Avenue on this day."
Cramer pressed Cook for financial details of the preorders, and Cook stressed that it's "early going" but still "we are so happy with what we see." He also wanted to stress "that's no increase [in price] for tariffs."
Cook was also pressed about AI as Cramer asked if Apple was seeing customers holding back from buying because of the lack of AI.
"We have AI everywhere in the phone," said Cook, "AirPods Pro Live Translation is AI. We just don't call it that."
Standing in a packed Fifth Avenue store with customers cheering around them, Cramer agreed with his CNBC colleague that there was a "different vibe" to this launch.
"Every year we move forward," said Cook, "[but] this year is a huge step forward. These [features] are things that some people didn't even know they wanted, but now they can't imagine their life without them."
Cook also spoke briefly about Apple's manufacturing academy in Detroit, and also about the state of the processor industry. "Competition is very good for the foundry business," he said."I would love to see Intel come back."
As reporters on the scene noted, it's unheard of for a CEO to get the kind of reception Cook has been having. Commenters online have continued the criticism that he's not Steve Jobs, but right now there are few CEOs that so many people could name, let alone queue up to meet.
