With Apple's annual Worldwide Developers Conference highlighting tight integration between the upcoming OS X Yosemite and iOS 8 platforms, market watchers on Wall Street saw the announcements as a direct shot at Google's competing Android platform.
Following the abundance of news at Monday's keynote presentation, analysts on Wall Street offered their reactions to clients via research notes. AppleInsider offers a roundup of the highlights below.
Evercore
Analyst Rob Cihra took particular note of Apple's emphasis on user upgrades, as 89 percent of iOS users are running the latest version of iOS 7, while OS X Mavericks has been adopted by 51 percent of the Mac installed base. In contrast, just 9 percent of devices running Google's Android are running "Kit Kat," its latest version, while Microsoft's Windows 8 has just 14 percent adoption.
"This positions Apple to capitalize on unique levels of consistency/security/functionality attractive to users but perhaps even more so to developers," Cihra wrote.
Cihra, like many on Wall Street, was encouraged by WWDC, but is more excited about profitable new products from Apple expected to launch in the second half of 2014. In addition to new, larger iPhone models, he's also hopeful that Apple will debut an updated Apple TV that will be able to run third-party applications, as well as a wrist-worn "iWatch."
RBC Capital Markets
Analyst Amit Daryanani questioned whether Apple has placed Google squarely "in the crosshairs" at this year's WWDC. He noted that both iOS and Yosemite will use Microsoft's Bing, rather than Google to run native Spotlight searches for Internet content.
In addition, Daryanani said that Apple's newly announced and simplified Swift programming language could help ensure that applications written for iOS aren't as "easily portable," meaning they might stay exclusive to iOS and not appear on competing devices running Android.
Daryanani also believes that Apple's HomeKit and HealtKit application programming interfaces could be the building blocks for Apple to sell connected home devices and a so-called "iWatch" at some point down the road.
Morgan Stanley
For Katy Huberty, Apple's keynote hinted at potential service opportunities the company could capitalize on. In particular, she's excited about the Touch ID fingerprint scanner being opened up to third-party apps, which she believes could pave the way for mobile payment services.
And improvements to iCloud, along with much cheaper storage options, could result in more meaningful services revenue for Apple, she believes. Huberty noted that while Apple previously charged $8.33 per month for 100 gigabytes of iCloud storage, its new plan is less than half that, at $3.99 per month, for twice the storage.
With at least 450 million iCloud users, Huberty believes storage upgrades represent a $5.3-billion-plus revenue opportunity for the company.
Piper Jaffray
Like Huberty, analyst Gene Munster also believes there are future opportunities for Apple to monetize new services. Specifically, he mentioned HealthKit and HomeKit as ways that Apple could charge parters for building authorized "Made for iDevice" accessories that are compatible with the company's ecosystem.
Munster also sees the HealthKit tools as setting the stage for an "iWatch" launch later this year. He believes Apple will likely announce such a product around October, at an event after it introduces its next iPhone.
Cowen and Company
Apple's new software and services will bode well for long-term ecosystem lock-in, analyst Timothy Acuri believes. He was especially impressed by the "continuity" features that bring OS X and iOS closer than ever, including Handoff, AirDrop, and iCloud Drive.
"The increased integration between OS X and iOS is further evidence, in our view, that Apple will eventually move to collapse the new high-end tablet and notebook markets with a new product(s) and that iPhone is being further positioned as a drive of Mac/iPad sales," Acuri wrote.
J.P. Morgan
Connectivity between iOS 8 and Yosemite, allowing phone calling and text messaging via a Mac, should help to lock users in to Apple's ecosystem, analyst Rod Hall believes.
And he believes that Apple's improvements to iCloud, including the addition of iCloud Drive, look better than competing services like Dropbox, thanks to the fact that background syncing is maintained across all Apple devices.
Wells Fargo Securities
Compared to other analysts, Maynard Um has been bearish as of late on Apple, with a "valuation range" for the company's stock of between $595 and $640. Following WWDC, Um said the keynote was a "slight disappointment" to him because of the lack of hardware announcements.
Um also said he felt Apple offered only a "cursory address" of its new home automation capabilities in iOS 8.
He did admit, however, that he was "encouraged" by the announcement of Apple's HealthKit and corresponding Health application, which he believes could allow the company to monetize user data analytics. But he also said that the transition to profiting off of this data would be "difficult."
48 Comments
This clearly illustrates NONE of the quoted analysts will admit they were all completely wrong in their predictions, they also lack a basic ability to comprehend what was presented. Idiots all!
Katy, where were all of your rumored announcements? Bad guesses or money spent on poor inside information?
Maynard, why did you expect hardware to be announced? It's the software that makes things run and if you don't understand this, get a new job. There was enough software enhancements and new directions announced to drive plenty of new hardware. The hardware is easy, it's the software that's difficult. Of course, analysts can only analyze what they can see.
A little off topic but am I the only one who finds it strange that Spotlight for OSX uses Bing and Spotlight for iOS 8 uses Google? I wonder what the reason behind this is... [IMG]http://d35lb3dl296zwu.cloudfront.net/uploads/photo/image/16340/DSC_1153.jpg[/IMG]
A little off topic but am I the only one who finds it strange that Spotlight for OSX uses Bing and Spotlight for iOS 8 uses Google?
I wonder what the reason behind this is...
Even I was surprised to see Google on live event.
But I read on other blogs that - it was tested for the pre-event with Google. So, continued.
What a bunch of clueless clowns.
Analysts contribute nothing at all besides making idiotically wrong, boneheaded predictions and they produce nothing besides noise. The best thing to do is just ignore them all. 75% of news and rumors about Apple is just garbage and should be filtered out, in my opinion.
The last thing that I would do before buying any stock or investing in Wall Street is to listen to what any of those clowns have to say.