Analysts: “We were not expecting much... but were still slightly disappointed” by Apple

Apple’s annual developer conference, WWDC, was no Google I/O this year.

After overpromising the capabilities of its AI software last year, Apple dialed back boasting big ideas and instead focused on more iterative design upgrades. The company made fewer mentions of Apple Intelligence and only referenced its beleaguered AI assistant, Siri, once.

The event underwhelmed investors, sending the stock down 1%. It didn’t do too much better among analysts.

Here’s a roundup of analysts and researchers that spoke with us or wrote in their notes:

David Vogt, UBS

“WWDC announcements are more evolutionary than revolutionary in our view. Apple made a number of software-related announcements at its annual developer conference, marking the second year in a row where WWDC was largely software focused and in our view unlikely to drive iPhone demand. While we believe some investors were hopeful that Apple could announce a new iPhone form factor or a ‘killer’ Apple Intelligence app, the updates were in-line with our more modest expectations.”

Nabila Popal, IDC

“The average Apple consumer doesn’t attend Google I/O. So an average Apple consumer, to them, this [AI] is still new. Yes, it’s late in terms of what’s already there in the Android world. But my point is to the Apple consumer, who focus on their Apple universe and their iOS devices, or their Apple ecosystem of devices, this is still going to be groundbreaking and it’s going to enhance their experience with their devices.”

Dan Ives, Wedbush Securities

“Slow but Steady Improvements to Strategy But Overall a Yawner... Overall, WWDC laid out the vision for developers BUT was void of any major Apple Intelligence progress as Cupertino is playing it safe and close to the vest after the missteps last year. We get the strategy but this is a big year ahead for Apple to monetize on the AI front as ultimately Cook & Co. may be forced into doing some bigger AI acquisitions to jumpstart this AI strategy. We have a high level of confidence Apple can get this right but they have a tight window to figure this out and that will be the focus of investors the next year.”

Michael Levin, CIRP

“We’ve shown before that Apple customers tend to buy new iPhones mostly when the old one stops working well or well enough, rather than to take advantage of new features. So, the software innovations that Apple announced wouldn’t make a huge different anyway. And, these innovations seem more incremental or behind-the-scenes, rather than ones that would catch users’ attention.”

Tim Long, Barclays

“We were not expecting much from the annual WWDC keynote, but were still slightly disappointed at the content and features announced today. We view changes to all device Operating Systems and Apple Intelligence as incremental, and not enough to drive any upgrade cycles... we did not see or hear anything today that would cause us to believe Apple Intelligence will be better for the iPhone 17 lineup later this year.”

Samik Chatterjee, JPMorgan

“Apple’s WWDC event did not include any major surprises that would convince investors around material changes to their outlook for either iPhones (or other devices) with the company marking out a set of incremental updates to its platform on different devices as well as opening up access to on-device Foundational AI models to developers — which can potentially be instrumental in driving interesting use cases/applications for consumers in time, but with limited immediate tailwinds.”