JP Morgan drops Apple target price over questions on when AI iPhone will launch
Investment firm JP Morgan predicts that Apple will introduce AI with the 2025 iPhone 17 Pro, and has dropped its current price target to $210 partly as a result.
Apple CEO Tim Cook
JP Morgan trimmed its Apple price target from $225 to $215 in February 2024, citing declining iPhone demand in China. Part of the new drop to $210, announced in a note seen by AppleInsider, is around the best time to get back into Apple stock ahead of the expected AI iPhone.
The investment firm thinks that the addition of AI features resembles when Apple introduced 5G to the iPhone. That prompted more upgrades because of 5G's clear speed benefits, and that drove up the share price.
Tracking that price starting with 2019 when rumors of 5G grew stronger, and on past its launch with the iPhone 12 range in 2020, the analysts say that valuation peaked in the first half of 2021. While 5G had more immediately obvious benefits than AI, the analysts predict a similar cycle.
JP Morgan says that hedge fund investors are particularly interested in the AI upgrade, but also that there is doubt over when that will actually happen. While Apple has been clear that iOS 18 will introduce AI features later in 2024, it's only a presumption that the year's iPhone 16 Pro will have any AI-related hardware upgrades.
"In our view, we expect the upgrade cycle to be driven by iPhone 17 [in 2025]," says the analysts' note. Specifically, they expect to see increased RAM and Neural Processing Units in September 2025, and also "broader awareness of potential AI use cases" by then.
JP Morgan thinks it's unlikely that Apple or smartphone rivals will introduce more than a limited AI-related hardware updates in 2024.
Alongside a lack of an AI-based iPhone 16 Pro, JP Morgan predicts lower demand for Macs and iPads, and it also questions Apple's Services growth.
Overall, it expects a risk to Services because of ongoing regulatory issues such as those over the App Store and Apple Music. However, it believes those issues will take some time to resolve, and will "play out beyond the AI upgrade issue."
Separately, Wedbush has maintained its $250 Apple price target, in part because of its expectation that there is pent-up demand for an AI iPhone 16 Pro.
Read on AppleInsider
Comments
I wonder how they come to the conclusion that first AI-integrated phone will be iPhone 17.
But will their AI strategy boost their sales and lead to a big cycle? Will iOS18 cover all AI features from iPhone 16 (In that case, JPM would be wrong)?
What added values do we get from WWDC 2024 when some features will not be rolled out with iPhone 16? We should wait till September 2025?
Others (Huawei or Samsung with Google would be way ahead in terms of their AI features).
I still wonder that JPM maintains their target price at $210, which is way too high given their weak guidance and weak financial performance.
The product isn't the end of the value chain. The consumer is.
Consumers are impatient and often fickle.
If analysts think consumers will put off purchases or switch to other brands because they believe Apple isn't offering enough value for their needs (be it in hardware, software or price) it will logically have a negative impact on the stock price.
If Apple weren't currently behind we wouldn't be seeing and endless line of rumours concerning what is supposedly coming. We wouldn't be seeing Apple itself making such a big deal about what is coming.
No. They would be pushing solutions which already exist.
The fact that they aren't doing that at all says a lot.
WWDC will be vital in terms of taking a gulp of air but the most logical scenario is that whatever gets announced won't actually ship until very late this year or next year.
That's definitely a Yikes! moment if ever there is one.
What are the odds that they try what they did last year? Deliberately refuse to mention AI and try to sell ML instead.
Absolutely zero because what is currently shipping from multiple vendors are the kind of solutions that consumers have been convinced they need and it is the consumers that drive sales.
Beyond that, and something many here simply refuse to acknowledge, there are literally hundreds of AI solutions being shipped across every industry you can think off which will also impact consumers' lives.
It would be announcing all the things that can be done right now with its current devices and ignoring what other players are offering.
Like I said, that isn't happening because it is behind current shipping solutions.
If you want to call it all ML that is fine but reality is right there if we want to see it.
Apple isn't offering equivalent solutions and recently the rumours have tended to lean towards them licencing solutions from others.
It isn't simply LLM's. It's now tiny LLMs. Multi-modal AI. AI on IoT. AI describing images and video as opposed to just identifying them.
For better or worse there has been an avalanche of progress over the last two years and it's now front and centre while Apple hasn't offered anything similar to the products which are generating all the buzz.
No one doubts that all those shortcomings will be dealt with at WWDC although there is doubt about if they will be dealt with through 'announcements' for future solutions or if they will feel the need to release something for the user base immediately.
Apple does not want to run their Generative AI on cloud. Apple strives for an AI feature on device. Their approach is more challenging than others.
Apple recently acquired DarwinAI. DarwinAI is specialised on providing an efficient solution how to run AI features on device smoothly.
Even if I am skeptical and have a critical view on Apple and Tim Cook, I have to say that I agree with mknelson.
The term "intelligence" is a marketing term. There is no inteliigence at all LLMs because they can´t think. They are just based on regression algorithms dealt with already existing data. For me personally, it would be an intelligence if they can think and come up with new solutions.
I think that there was a confrontation between John Giannandrea and Craig Federighi on their AI strategy.
While John wanted to observe the evolution of ChatGPT, Craig wanted to roll out some features.
John may have a valid point because existing LLMs are not perfect and could deliver wrong answers or hallucinations.
But at the same time, Apple may have underestimated the hype and the impact of Generative AI.
Generative AI get better and better in short terms. It is hard to "catch up".
Apple may not need over 5 trillion parameters because they can´t run on iPhone, but Apple seems to be clueless and hesitate to implement their ideas (Why do they need Gemini or OpenAI? Are they jusr considered as an option? Or doesn´t Apple have the ball to roll out their own in-house AI-chatbot or image generator?)
For a company making a living from people upgrading the lack of major new features is affecting the stock price. Apple could use som AI to become relevant again. Shipping 5G-advanced or Wifi 7 in iPhone 16 Pro won't do it.
What the iPhone 16 customer is assured of, is that the iPhone will have the leading edge hardware in place at iPhone 16's arrival, and at least some AI apps will be available at the time of delivery.
Do you really believe that developers are going to ignore the most profitable App market, in the iPhone?
I have no qualms with how it is described.
The main point was that Apple now finds itself in a situation where it failed to keep up with other key players and has no equivalent solutions to those that have been making the news for the last couple of years.
On-device solutions have been available for all devices since 2017 when the first NPUs appeared on mobile phones and even then Apple appeared to be behind.
Since then more and more on-device solutions have appeared as models have been trained and updated. Even down to earbuds that use AI (ML) for adaptive noise cancelation, voice enhancement, bone voice biometrics etc.
On-device solutions have their uses but some solutions will always be dealt with off-device. Cloud phones will actually purposefully avoid on-device solutions as the goal is to minimise the compute stress on the handset.
Solutions will use the best compute resources for the task depending on varying factors. Privacy and latency have been two of the main reasons for on-device solutions but some things will always be off-device because accumulated compute resources will always outweigh on-device compute resources.
Here is an interesting proposal for using the network for AI (in this case for 6G). Network sensing will definitely play a part of 6G and that could lead to some current wearables not being needed.
[.Pdf]
https://www-file.huawei.com/-/media/corp2020/pdf/publications/huawei-research/issue2/net4ai-en.pdf?la=en
With its acquired patent pool for 5G thanks to Intel, Apple should be looking ahead to things like 6G and and how AI will or could be used. Perhaps it is but the point is that right now it is behind on current offerings. That document is about three or four years old now.
Hallucinations are part and parcel of generative solutions and they won't go away with any Apple solution that wants to at least match competitors offerings.
A lot of research is going into how to reduce it but for the foreseeable future it is to be expected.
Internally, like you say, I think it's very possible that at people were pulling in different directions on this. Between John and Craig it's entirely possible that different approaches were favoured or that higher management just didn't see the need to move so quickly or resources were stretched. Maybe someone will say something anonymously to someone and
a better picture will emerge.
With hindsight it's clear the decision to deliberately avoid even saying the term 'AI' was not the best move. There seems to be a lot news surrounding recent AI related Apple acquisitions or licencing agreements which (maybe erroneously) give the impression that Apple is simply scrambling get it's foot in the door and catch up.
Apple caught skating to a puckless place.
Your entire post completely sidesteps what is being said (Apple being behind right now) and points the finger at some unknown future scenario.
That doesn't cut it. We're talking about now, not the future.
Do you think everyone else will slow down while Apple gets something cooking?
AI will be another case where Apple trailing the "hype" in the marketplace, will have no negative impact on iPhone sales. Consumers, especially Apple users, aren't as "fickle" as you posit, and in fact, not even demanding AI at this time.
Apple has also guided down for this quarter.
On 5G, again, Apple was behind. That was the point.
When they finally released an older, bolted on (Qualcomm!) 5G modem they basically turned the entire keynote into a 5G lovefest. Obviously Apple considered that to be a pivotal hardware announcement and just as well. Another full year without 5G would have been a disaster. Shudder the thought.
This year it looks like they will follow the same tactics for AI. At least with announcements. Actual products remain a mystery. Expect an AI lovefest.
Perhaps they will still try to avoid saying the term and brand it as Apple Intelligence!
They might even try to spin the abandoned car project as providing some groundwork for what they plan to announce. That would be logical from a marketing perspective.
If Apple is not providing a "sufficiently compelling product", which isn't in my opinion what is happening, it is also the case that the PRC has encouraged nationalistic support of Huawei. That is certainly a fair assessment on my part, especially given the lack of a competitive SOC, and the PRC attempting to shore up its economy in the face of loss of much of the foreign investment that it depended on.
More so, and this is absolutely current events, China is a slowing economy, and of course, Apple's iPhone is a pricey purchase; money is tight.
Yet Apple is still in China, still selling, even in a slowdown. It may be that this is the future of Apple in China, or not, and at the same time, Apple continues to expand in the largest country by population, India.
You seem to base your assumptions on your personal likes and desires, but I don't believe those reflect the general consumer. I expect that I will continue to be correct, and you will, again, be seen to be incorrect.
The car project was dropped. The homebrew 5G modem hasn't dropped. It is behind on AI. It's got a whole bunch of problems in the EU. Those problems could be repeated in the US and in other jurisdictions.
Speculation is fine and fun but reality today is what it is and there is no getting away from that.
It's not the end of the world but things aren't going great right now.