It all seemed to be getting so neat. Earlier this year the iPhone SE was retired, nominally replaced (at a considerably higher price point!) by the iPhone 16e, which left the entire range helpfully categorised by generation: the iPhone 15 and 15 Plus, and the iPhone 16, 16e, 16 Plus, 16 Pro, and 16 Pro Max. You only had to look at the name of the product to tell which cycle it was part of, and it was obvious that anything with a 16 in the name was newer than anything with a 15, and so on.
But that convenient state of affairs lasted all of six and a half months, and now we’re worse off than before. There are four new handsets for late 2025: the iPhone 17, the iPhone 17 Pro, the iPhone 17 Pro Max, and… the iPhone Air. So why did Apple pick that name, and not the more obvious, logical, and previously rumored iPhone 17 Air?
The super-special new product theory
The first theory is that Apple wants to treat the iPhone Air as an entirely new product line, and that its “version numbers” therefore need to begin from 1, not 17. In much the same way that the first iPad Air, which came out in 2013 after four previous generations of iPad, was simply called iPad Air. And when Apple released another model the following year, it was called iPad Air 2, not iPad 6 Air.
The iPad Air was the first non-generic iPad that Apple had released, so there wasn’t a precedent for how such things should work. (What’s more, iPad branding was a mess before the iPad Air came out. Remember “The New iPad” or “iPad with Retina Display”?) Whereas the iPhone has existed as multiple brands/lines since the iPhone 6 Plus came out alongside the iPhone 6 in 2014, and in the overwhelming majority of cases, the policy has been to keep the generation number in there and just tack Plus, mini, Pro, Pro Max, or “e” on the end.
Apple
The exception to that system, and the obvious precedent for the iPhone Air’s naming convention, is the iPhone SE. The SE had its own generation numbers, with “(2nd generation)” and “(3rd generation)” frequently used to differentiate the 2020 and 2022 models on official materials. But that system only applied to Apple’s budget phones, and made a sort of sense since they came out in the spring and existed outside the yearly fall cycle that the other phones followed. And it was ditched anyway when the iPhone 16e came out this spring.
Marketing the iPhone Air as its own thing, rather than merely one variant of the latest iPhone generation, does have the benefit of making it feel more special. After all, Apple is proposing to charge $999 for a phone that has shorter battery life than the $799 iPhone 17 and half the number of rear camera lenses: clearly labelling them as separate lines makes direct comparisons less likely. Of course, you’re paying more for the iPhone Air; it’s a completely new product. Please stop looking at the battery life estimates.
The one-off theory
Another provocative theory, proposed on Macworld’s Slack channel yesterday by contributor Mahmoud Itani, is that Apple has gone for the non-numeric Air branding because it’s intended to be a one-off product.
He suggests that there might not be an iPhone Air 2 or iPhone 18 Air: unless sales are overwhelmingly and unexpectedly high, the device could merely be a midpoint on the road to the first iPhone Fold. (A device on which, incidentally, that ultra-slim chassis will be necessary, rather than a pleasant aesthetic bonus.) Whether that will be called iPhone Fold or iPhone 18 Fold remains to be seen.
Even if the iPhone Air gets a 2nd-gen update, keeping the number off gives Apple some flexibility with when it’s updated. Maybe it gets a price cut next year when the iPhone 18 arrives and sticks around for an extra year. Without a “17” in the name, it won’t feel like you’re using an old phone next to the iPhone 18 lineup.
One of these things is not like the other.
Apple
The chaos theory
Ultimately, however, these are all just theories. It’s never easy to be sure why Apple makes the branding decisions it does. Partly because the company is so secretive, but mainly because its branding policies are all over the place.
The iPhone has (mostly) followed an overarching version number system, with sub-brands tagged on the end; the iPad and Apple Watch, conversely, list sub-brands first, with their own independent version numbers tagged on the end of that. Macs are currently labelled by processor but used to be labelled by year… and that was the year they came out, whereas operating systems are now labelled by the year they came out plus one. And occasionally you’ll come across a product on Apple’s website (such as the HomePod 2) with no label at all indicating which version you’re about to buy.
So perhaps we’re crediting Apple with a little too much sense. Perhaps we’re overthinking things. And instead of asking why Apple called it the iPhone Air rather than the iPhone 17 Air, we should be asking why on earth we ever thought Apple would apply logic to the branding of a new product.
For comprehensive analysis of Apple’s latest round of product announcements, Macworld is the place to come. Check out our September Event hub, and our list of everything Apple announced.
