Why Morgan Stanley Analysts Doubled Apple iPhone Predictions

Apple entered the AI recreation final month with Apple Intelligence, a set of latest options designed to carry AI straight to iPhone, iPad, and Mac screens. Apple’s AI has a catch although: it solely works on the latest iPhones and it may very well be the rationale why tens of millions of iPhone customers with older fashions critically take into consideration upgrading, say Morgan Stanley analysts.

Morgan Stanley analysts named Apple a top-pick inventory on Monday, after which Apple shares jumped to an all-time excessive, per Bloomberg. Apple Intelligence is a “clear catalyst” for iPhone upgrades and can allow Apple to promote almost half a billion iPhones within the subsequent two years, analyst Eric Woodring acknowledged.

Apple Intelligence is anticipated to return out this fall for the iPhone 15 Professional and 15 Professional Max — older iPhones won’t have entry to Apple’s AI. The replace provides AI-generated emojis, a better Siri, and direct entry to ChatGPT, although some anticipated Siri AI upgrades might arrive subsequent yr.

Associated: Apple Is Increasing What The iPhone Can Do. This is What’s Altering Proper Away.

“We imagine that there’s file stage of pent-up demand getting into the iPhone 16 cycle later this yr,” Woodring famous, including that Apple Intelligence delivers “unique-to-the-Apple-ecosystem” worth.

Morgan Stanley beforehand forecasted that Apple would promote round 230 million iPhones in the identical time-frame, making the brand new prediction greater than double the earlier one.

Apple can also be uniquely positioned to be the AI “base camp” for its prospects, “simply because it has executed for digital content material (iPod) and social media (iPhone),” wrote Morgan Stanley analyst Ananda Baruah.

^{Apple CEO Tim Cook dinner waves to prospects earlier than they enter Apple’s fifth Avenue retailer. (Photograph by Drew Angerer/Getty Pictures)}

Different analysts at completely different companies have made related predictions. Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives advised Reuters in June that greater than 15% of present iPhone customers may purchase the brand new iPhone Apple is anticipated to launch this fall.

Associated: Apple Labels These 3 Iconic Merchandise ‘Classic,’ and Quickly-to-Be ‘Out of date’

Ives estimated that 270 million iPhone customers haven’t purchased a brand new mannequin previously 4 years.

Greater than half of Apple’s general income within the second quarter of 2024 got here from iPhones; Apple has the bulk of the market share for smartphones within the U.S.

On the time of writing, Apple was the biggest firm on this planet with a $3.584 trillion market cap. Microsoft, Nvidia, Google, and Amazon adopted.

Associated: Warren Buffett Needed to Work From His iPhone After Phone Traces Went Down at Berkshire Hathaway: ‘I am Glad We Did not Promote All of Our Apple’