Wedbush: AI & pent-up iPhone 16 demand outweigh concerns over China sales
In a note seen by AppleInsider, investment firm Wedbush has told its clients that it is maintaining its price target for Apple, despite what it describes as a horror show of current problems.
Tim Cook at a game tournament in Apple Taikoo Li, Chengdu
Wedbush raised its Apple target price to $250 in December 2023, specifically because of the company's long-term resilience, and also its enormous base of users. Since then, Apple has seen iPhone sales fall further in China, and it's also cancelled the Apple Car.
In the note, the analysts are clear in saying that they don't underestimate Apple's current problems. In particular, they say that having visited Asia, they have witnessed price discounting on the iPhone because of slow sales.
Those slow sales have at times been overhyped. But it is true that the iPhone 15 does not appear to be as popular in China as the iPhone 14, although Tim Cook blames the difference in part on currency fluctuations.
Calling that situation dismal, the analysts also regard the cancellation of the Apple Car as bad news since they say it means Apple spent a decade on a "long bad bet." They do note that the cancellation means Apple can redeploy staff onto its AI plans, however, and that is one reason it expects matters to improve.
The addition of AI -- or more prominent AI at least -- is a expected to help increase sales. Wedbush does already expect that iPhone sales will improve with the release of the iPhone 16 range, because it believes that there is a pent-up demand for upgrading.
Previously, it's predicted 220 million to 230 million iPhone sales across the whole of 2024. Based on its new estimates of the demand from upgraders likely to buy the iPhone 16, Wedbush's new note estimates a total of up to 270 million iPhones sold for the year.
Wedbush's price target for Apple over the years (Source: Wedbush)
Then, too, it notes that Apple's Services are strong and growing at double-digit rates. Plus Apple has what Wedbush describes as the strongest installed base of any company in the world.
It believes that with 2.2 billion iOS devices in active use, that Apple is going to be able to monetize that base further than it already has.
While Wedbush doesn't elaborate on this issue of monetizing existing users, Apple has many opportunities to do so. It can work to increase how many users subscribe to Apple TV+, or its iCloud tiers, or the Apple One bundle -- and it can also increase the cost of each of these.
Separately, investment firm Morgan Stanley has recently also come out saying that overall the cancellation of the Apple Car is a good move for the company.
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The cancellation of the Car was not a $10 billion loss, much of that research into full self driving systems can and will be applied to various AI technologies and will also be a long term win for Apple.
Analysts are just grasping at straws when it comes to Apple. The fact is that it's been 8 years since Apple has produced a great new mass market product that helped its bottom line - AiirPods (2016) and Apple Watch (2015). The recently announced Vision Pro won't contribute meaningfully to growth for years. So AAPL investors have nothing to look forward to. Although services are growing well, the gains there won't be more than the stagnation and outright reduction in iPhone sales that are seen now.
20% of Apple's sales come from China alone. The economic situation there as well as the geopolitical rivalry with the US won't be resolved anytime soon, so I doubt sales there will improve in the near future. Another poster mentioned India growth offsetting China sales losses. I don't believe that. First of all, sales in India are tiny in comparison. Yes, they are growing nicely, but it'll be years before they approach the sales volume in China.
Tiny Large Language Models are gaining traction as is the ability to not only recognize an image or face but describe it too (contextualisation included).
Ameca was quite popular at MWC and although it's a bit of a touring side show at lots of fairs nowadays, it does give you a peak of how even the most basic AI models can almost 'convince' you once paired with something human looking and basic movement.
https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8tkp4y
I don't see Apple getting into robotics but AI will be important this year on many levels.
Past efforts were the same, or quite possibly less, than what others have delivered with ML etc so they need to deliver something to claw back mindset.
That is what Tim Cook is trying to do with early references to WWDC and the seemingly frantic activity within Apple to get something out the door.
There are numerous AI products and projects that they have been working on for years. Just because it’s not a known consumer product does not mean that they haven’t been working on AI, or whatever Apple wants to call it.
Lack of any real shipping equivalent product.
Tim Cook going on record as 'pre-announcing' AI moves for this year.
Some people (with apparent insider information) here saying that Apple was basically putting the pedal to the metal to get AI baked into some products. No. Not just the ML stuff.
Car project shut down with claims that many employees will be transferred to AI teams.
No one can know for sure of course but the lack of any equivalent shipping product (to what has been sucking all the news time up) is obviously telling.
Saying Apple has been 'doing ML for years' is saying nothing. So has everybody else.
What markets react to is, tangible, shipping products and Apple is still to deliver where others are already advancing.
As things stand, WWDC will see important AI announcements. Why do you think Tim Cook put that particular piece of information into the public domain?
Apple went from not even wanting to utter the letters 'AI' last year to planting them straight up into this year's WWDC! That is some change of tack.
Once those announcements are made, what will happen? Will they start rolling out products immediately? Will they wait for this year's product refresh/iOS release? Will they be ready or released as beta?
September/October is still a long way off but competitors have been shipping AI related solutions for a while now and that is why we see almost daily news pieces on this or that advance and right across the technology board. Almost in parallel, we see news pieces that reflect on Apple's missing AI products.
We see those because they haven't been released.
MWC concluded just days ago and it was all about 5.5G and AI.
Generative AI is everywhere. It's now moving into the video realm.
Tiny Large Language Models are here.
Work on existing LLMs is advancing at an incredible pace.
Where has Apple been for the last two years in this area? Claiming they are working on it and always have been is saying nothing.
Everybody has been working on it. The difference is that all the big players except Apple have something to show for it.
That's why it's been in the news for what seems like forever now.
JellyBelly responding to twoIf2919:
India growth does not have to equal all of China’s sales, it only needs to equal the drop in sales in China.
JellyBelly comment in general:
1.) Apple has always been reticent to discuss its technology advancements until it’s ready to drop a product using those advancements.
6.) So far, many of Apple’s failures seem to have been opportunities to learn and apply with refinement.
Not necessarily about a large amount of data.
Apple can´t have such large amounts of data on device. We are talking about tiny iPhones.
What Apple strives for is their offline AI function on device.
Everything will be customized on iOS. The attractiveness of this customization is that iOS will be no longer controlled by Apple, but by you.
Apple has personal data. Apple can offer a customized AI service incl. healthcare.
OpenAI or other Open Source enterprises do not have those information. Therefore, they would not know what advices they should give you.
Having large data does not mean necessarily that you are unstoppable. See Alphabet with Gemini what they f*cked up.
But I don´t think Apple will highlight at WDCC what I mentioned above. I don´t expect too much.
Wedbush.... We don´t know what to expect at WDCC, but saying it will drive their sales and boost the stock price.... Speculation at finest.
If it were no big deal Tim Cook wouldn't have said anything about AI and this year. He would have kept mum for a big reveal in June.
He said it because it's a massive deal.
They deliberately tried to avoid the term last year by making out as if AI in the guise of ML was where the action was. That is correct and there is no denying that but newer AI related advances here and there is no doubt that these new product avenues are where the action is now.
Now that the pressure is really on, suddenly it's 'Oh yeah, we're working on that too'. 'Just wait til WWDC' [because right now we have nothing to show for it].
It is anything but fluff IMO.
Henceforth, I await Apple to solve the classroom;
https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1765374439678423509/photo/1
Now that would be a winning strategy even the EU; always a machine to machine level playing field.
they also use “cleansed data” when accessing databases that support Applecare.
The reason why Tim doesn’t have anything to say is, he couldn’t compress what the technology they have been working on down to something that can be explained in a sentence or two. He is deliberate in his speech and it would be very difficult for him to break down the different technologies they have into a few words that can be discussed outside of Apple’s rules of disclosure. That’s why I believe his hints about the VP don’t even come close to the actual product.
It's true there is a lot of buzz around AI right now and lots of solutions are piggybacking off it but that is not where the story ends.
There are a huge amount of real solutions already on the market with no end in sight of future uses.
Professional and consumer uses.
Solutions that have industry wide impact and are already here.
Huawei expanded its Pangu Models from 30+ to a 100+ last week.
For the car industry I wouldn't look to European manufacturers for AI. Its the Chinese who are shipping.
The GOD network:
https://heyupnow.com/blogs/news/huawei-ads-2-0-launched-with-4-new-major-improvements-heyup-newsroom
They call that 4D vision because it will be capable of 'seeing' the car in front of the one in front of you. Also handles detection in adverse weather conditions like heavy rain or snow.
Ports, mining, manufacturing, health, science, airports, education, fintech, data centers, self driving networks, object detection, NLU, NLG...
Telecoms industry only (from last week). AI keynotes all over the shop and endless solutions presented (or improved) on the show floor.
41 sessions dedicated to AI:
https://www.mwcbarcelona.com/themes/ai?date=2024-02-26
Some projects are foundational in that they are being deployed to market but require specific adaptation for final deployment.
I would not describe it as fluff.
Of course, if you do not have enough iCloud capacities and additional data will not be saved. In that case, data are gone once you leave the device.