June 5, 2024, definitely marked a frenzy in the managerial office at Apple Inc. for the tech-giant was overtaken by a graphic chip manufacturer NVIDIA, in what was evidently a second loss in market-cap position for the company since the beginning of this year. Apple dominated the valuation game for much of 2011-2024, before passing on the mantle of the most valuable company in terms of market capitalization to Microsoft in January 2024. Analysts across the world attributed this loss in position to its hesitancy in effectively entering the AI race which seems to be one of the major factors driving growth in the world of technology now. It was clear that while Apple may have pioneered in the production of virtual assistants back in 2011, when it gave Siri to the world, holding onto its past achievements wasn’t going to give the multi-national conglomerate anything more than an ego kick or anything close to what it currently needs to be at the top.
Apple is known for its commitment to not come out with features unless absolutely reliable and thus, granting its users superior technology with high end data-privacy. This seems to be the reason why, hitherto, the company had been avoiding indulging in large-scale AI and Generative AI integration, which is still a vulnerable and unreliable territory, even when many of its competitors had been doing quite the opposite in recent years. But recent blows to its image have certainly made Apple Inc. rethink its priorities and approach towards this upcoming AI race. In fact, Apple’s situation is not very different from a hurt USA, which had been avoiding entering world war 2, but was very much pushed to the brim by attacks on its internal security and thus, it is obvious that the tech giant’s response isn’t going to be very different or non-brutal either.
A week into its slip from grace, Apple has already come out with dozens of features aimed at AI integration, including a unique calculator app and major Siri modifications, in a series of iPadOS 18 updates during the World Wide Developers Conference (WWDC’24). A major announcement from the event was giving Siri the ability to access Open AI’s chat gpt to respond to users’ queries. Additionally, the event revealed the titan’s commitment to also bring other third-party AI models on board by the end of this year. In doing so, Apple has maintained its reputation of deploying iterative features, ones which perhaps already exist elsewhere but not as creatively and expansively as in its products.
As expected, this AI-powered optimism gave the company’s stock a much needed push, causing it to end the day of June 11, 2024 as high as $207.15 per share (up 7.26%), taking Apple’s market capitalization to $3.18 trillion to surpass NVIDIA and once again trail only Microsoft. While this approach may have given Apple Inc. the attention and publicity it so desparately needed in the current competitive landscape, this form of imitative innovation will have to be replaced with effective GenAI innovation going forward. Investors, who’ve shown faith and hope in the company for long will need a fair bit more convincing, something more than a swift comeback, to not let go of their long-term ties with the company and help it maintain the top spot. Tim Cook’s ( CEO Apple) juxtaposition of AI with ‘Apple intelligence’ is only a sign that Apple realises this truth and shall soon enter the battle, armed and ready.
Apple intelligence aims to focus on personalization, so much so that it translates into personal intelligence while in fact being artificially induced. Some of its capabilities shall include context-driven notifications, writing improvements, image generation and akin. A part of this vision is visible in this time’s genmoji or ‘custom emoji’ update which shall allow users to create emojis when they can’t find quite the right emoji to express what they’re trying to say. With 2 days left in the closing of WWDC’24, god knows what other plans Apple has yet to disclose to the world. But all being said, Apple is definitely not ready to compromise on the privacy front. According to Craig Federighi (SVP Software Engineering, Apple), a long-term vision of the company is to “extend the privacy and security of your iPhone into the cloud” and if this isn’t the most Apple thing to say, I don’t know what is.
Gaurika Bhanot
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