Can Apple Be Saved by Google?

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Mar 18, 6:55AM EDT

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Can Apple Be Saved by Google? — © Povozniuk / iStock via Getty Images

Several media reports say Apple Inc. (NASDAQ: AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) may license Google’s Gemini for generative AI on iPhones. Bloomberg writes, “The two companies are in active negotiations to let Apple license Gemini, Google’s set of generative AI models, to power some new features coming to the iPhone software this year.” It could be a win-win. Google’s product is also seen behind the offerings by Microsoft and AI leader OpenAI. Apple has become viewed as a hardware company without advanced AI software products.

Apple CEO Tim Cook recently said AI features would be available on iOS, the company’s operating system. That means they would run on iPhones, iPads, Macs and the Apple Watch. Apple has one huge advantage. It has 2.2 billion active devices in the world. It could download its AI feature on hundreds of millions of these with a single iOS upgrade. (Five reasons to avoid Apple products today.)

Google’s generative AI has had problems of its own. Its image-creating feature produced images that were not historically accurate. Its results for user questions about elections inside and outside the United States were also questioned.

Apple and Google’s parent, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL), could both use good news. While other mega-cap tech stocks like Microsoft have had strong years so far in the stock market, Apple is down 10% year to date, and Alphabet is flat. The S&P 500 is up 7% over the same period.

Even if Apple and Alphabet form a partnership, there is no guarantee that their AI product will be considered as strong as that of competitors. The partnership will have looked good on paper but faltered based on execution.

About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.