(Angela Weiss/Getty Images)

Apple’s smartphone market share jumped to a world-leading 20% in 2025

Here’s what Dan Ives says the iPhone maker has to do to reach Wedbush’s $350 price target this year.

1/12/26 8:42AM

2025 was a great one for Apple, whose global smartphone market share jumped to 20%, besting Samsung and making it the top-selling brand in the world by shipments, new data from Counterpoint Research shows.

2026 could be a great one for Apple, too, according to Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives — if the company focuses on four things the analyst laid out in a note Monday morning.

To reach Wedbush’s $350 price target, a 35% premium to where Apple is currently trading, Ives said the company must:

1) Make Google Gemini the “exclusive” partner for Apple’s AI strategy, which has heretofore languished using the company’s own models. Bloomberg previously reported that Apple plans to pay Google $1 billion a year to use its Gemini AI model to power Siri.

2) Release an actually good revamped Siri on time. That means the updated Siri, expected this spring, must finally deliver the personalized features and deep system integration Apple promised two years ago. Ives also expects Apple to launch an “AI subscription service” this summer that would function as an additional revenue stream for the company’s growing and lucrative Services segment.

3) Continue its iPhone 17 success with the iPhone 18. Ives thinks 2026 iPhone unit sales will “handily exceed current Street estimates,” which FactSet’s analyst consensus currently pegs at around 245 million, compared with about 233 million last year. Driving the success of the iPhone 18, Ives said, will be the foldable option as well as average selling prices, which he expects to rise $100 on Pro models.

4) Announce that CEO Tim Cook is staying on. Lately, news reports and prediction markets have rallied around Apple hardware chief John Ternus as Apple’s next CEO, saying the company has accelerated its CEO succession plans. Ives said that Apple must say otherwise and put a stop to that chatter since the company is in an “integral period for Cupertino to design and execute on its broader AI Revolution strategy.” Ives expects Cook to continue as CEO “at least through the end of 2027.”

Taken together, Ives sees 2026 as a long-awaited “prove-it” year for Apple — one where AI ambition, iPhone execution, and leadership stability all need to line up to justify the stock’s next leg higher.

Jon Keegan1h

Google drops new Nano Banana

Google is hoping to recapture the viral boost it received when it released its Nano Banana image generation model. Nano Banana 2 arrives today, which Google has rolled into its Gemini app.

The new model promises more accurate text rendering and translation and “advanced world knowledge,” which “pulls from Gemini’s real-world knowledge base, and is powered by real-time information and images from web search to more accurately render specific subjects,” according to the company’s press release.

New creative controls let users keep groups of characters consistent across scenes, render images with higher resolution, and parse complex prompts.

The first version of Nano Banana became popular for making action figures out of users, and helped catapult the Gemini AI app to the top of the charts, bumping ChatGPT from its perch.

Nano Banana 2: Combining Pro capabilities with lightning-fast speed

New creative controls let users keep groups of characters consistent across scenes, render images with higher resolution, and parse complex prompts.

The first version of Nano Banana became popular for making action figures out of users, and helped catapult the Gemini AI app to the top of the charts, bumping ChatGPT from its perch.

Rani Molla3h

Tesla’s ride-hailing service is looking a lot more like Uber’s than Waymo’s

Despite numerous promises about amassing a giant network of driverless cars, so far it seems like Tesla’s Robotaxis are a lot more similar to Uber’s plain old ride-hailing service than Waymo’s expanding autonomous fleet.

In California, where Tesla has its largest ride-hailing service, the company has taken no formal steps to gain approval for a truly driverless car service, according to Reuters. Throughout 2025, Tesla failed to log a single mile of autonomous test driving on state roads, and has not applied for the necessary permits to test or deploy vehicles without a human present. Currently, Tesla holds only a basic permit that requires a human safety monitor to remain in the driver’s seat at all times.

Currently, Tesla’s California Robotaxi service consists of roughly 300 Teslas operated by human drivers using the company’s supervised Full Self-Driving tech. In Austin, where the company has about 45 vehicles, Tesla made a big show earlier this year of announcing it was removing the safety monitors sitting in the front seats during rides. However, to date, only a handful of those vehicles have been reported to be actually operating without a safety monitor onboard.

In other words, it’s performing a service more akin to a tech-heavy Uber ride than the one operated by Alphabet subsidiary Waymo, which earlier this week announced it now has driverless rides available to the public in 10 markets. Even Uber is trying to put space between itself and the old driver-having Ubers of yore: this week its autonomous software partner said the company plans to launch a driverless service in London this year, with plans for 10 markets.

During its earnings report last month, Tesla said it planned to offer Robotaxi service in a half dozen new cities in the first half of this year, including Phoenix, Miami, and Las Vegas. Judging by Tesla’s progress so far, it’s likely those services will also feature a human in the front seat.

Tesla touts California robotaxis but does nothing to get permits

Rani Molla

Salesforce gets more direct about rivals and more vocal about customers

CEO Marc Benioff likened competitors ServiceNow and Veeva to “purgatory” and named specific customers Salesforce says it’s taken from them.

Salesforce CEO Marc Benioff Kicks Off Dreamforce With Keynote Presentation

Rani Molla

Eye on AI

22h

Salesforce beats on earnings but posts light full-year guidance

The SaaS company posted results for the fourth quarter and full 2026 fiscal year on Wednesday.

Rani Molla2/25/26

Amazon, Google, Meta, Microsoft, Oracle will agree to “build, bring, or buy” AI data center power

A month after President Trump called on Big Tech companies to “pay their own way” for data center energy — and a day after Trump pledged as much in his State of the Union address — a number of tech’s biggest companies are planning to make it official, according to a report from Fox News.

Alphabet, Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, and Oracle, in addition to OpenAI and xAI, plan to sign agreements at a March 4 White House event committing to supply their own electricity for new AI data centers.

“Under this bold initiative, these massive companies will build, bring, or buy their own power supply for new AI data centers, ensuring that Americans’ electricity bills will not increase as demand grows,” White House spokeswoman Taylor Rogers told Fox.

Already, Amazon, Microsoft, and Meta have committed to as much in recent data center announcements.

Scoop: Trump brings Big Tech to White House to curb power costs amid AI boom