Apple has released a sleeker and more expensive version of its lowest-priced iPhone in an attempt to widen the audience for a bundle of artificial intelligence technology that the company has been hoping will revive demand for its most profitable product lineup. The iPhone 16e unveiled Wednesday is the fourth generation of a model that's sold at a dramatically lower price than the iPhone's standard and premium models. The previous bargain-bin models were called the iPhone SE, with the last version coming out in 2022. Like the higher-priced iPhone 16 lineup unveiled last September, the iPhone 16e includes the souped-up computer chip needed to process an array of AI features that automatically summarise text and audio and create on-the-fly emojis while smartening up the device's virtual assistant, Siri. It will also have a more powerful battery and camera.

Is this the beginning of the end for Apple? The tech giant's inexorable growth has been a given for most of the 21st century but, on Wednesday, Apple reported its first decline in quarterly sales for 13 years: a 13% fall, down to 50bn ( 34bn). That's still enough to reduce the UK's budget deficit by half, but, in Apple's reckoning, it's a catastrophe. Apple's share price fell by 8% yesterday, wiping more than 40bn off its value in a few hours. Is the world falling out of love with the Croesus of Cupertino? Even Siri was sounding like an exhausted spin doctor when we asked it for answers.