Apple AI Play Disappoints Investors

By Douglas A. McIntyre Published Jun 11, 6:40AM EDT

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Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL | AAPL Price Prediction) AI offerings at WWDC 2024 disappointed investors.

The Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) 2024, Apple Inc.’s (NASDAQ: AAPL) annual developers meeting, made the front page of the media worldwide. Apple released its artificial intelligence (AI) products, hoping to catch up with the AI offerings from industry leaders Microsoft and Alphabet’s Google. Investors did not think it went well, and Apple’s shares continued languishing. For example, Apple’s shares are flat this year and fell after the Apple AI announcements. On the other hand, Alphabet Inc. (NASDAQ: GOOGL) stock is higher by 25% over the same period.

The Problem for Apple Investors

Disappointed Apple investors.

The problem for investors is that Apple needed to announce something to dazzle consumers. It appears shareholders will need to wait for that, if it comes at all, until the iPhone 16 launch in September. However, Apple may have just made what it considers its best option to find people to upgrade to the new iPhone. “There isn’t anything here that propels the brand ahead of its as-expected trajectory of incrementalism,” Dipanjan Chatterjee, an analyst at Forrester, told Reuters.

Among Apple’s headlines was that the new products were “AI for the rest of us,” which is an old slogan from Mac promotions. However, the “rest of us” expected something beyond what people can get for free or some improvement over basic AI products like those in Windows 11 or the new Google search features. Apple bragged about its new privacy for AI. Privacy has not been a major issue with the lightspeed adoption of AI so far.

One Apple AI feature can help people write and take notes quickly. They can do this across any Apple hardware. It is hard to see how this feature is a breakthrough, even for people who want to “minimize distractions.”

Siri, Apple’s ancient voice recognition, also got an AI upgrade. The new Siri, Apple said, will be able to “help you like never before.” That is not much of an endorsement for a product that is several years old.

Apple needed a home run at WWDC 2024. Instead, it barely got on base.

Prediction: This Magnificent 7 Stock Will Rally Through Summer

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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.