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Wedbush: AI & pent-up iPhone 16 demand outweigh concerns over China sales

Tim Cook at a game tournament in Apple Taikoo Li, Chengdu

In a note seen by AppleInsider, investment firm Wedbush has told its clients that it is maintaining its price target for Apple, despite what it describes as a horror show of current problems.

Wedbush raised its Apple target price to $250 in December 2023, specifically because of the company's long-term resilience, and also its enormous base of users. Since then, Apple has seen iPhone sales fall further in China, and it's also cancelled the Apple Car.

In the note, the analysts are clear in saying that they don't underestimate Apple's current problems. In particular, they say that having visited Asia, they have witnessed price discounting on the iPhone because of slow sales.

Those slow sales have at times been overhyped. But it is true that the iPhone 15 does not appear to be as popular in China as the iPhone 14, although Tim Cook blames the difference in part on currency fluctuations.

Calling that situation dismal, the analysts also regard the cancellation of the Apple Car as bad news since they say it means Apple spent a decade on a "long bad bet." They do note that the cancellation means Apple can redeploy staff onto its AI plans, however, and that is one reason it expects matters to improve.

The addition of AI — or more prominent AI at least — is a expected to help increase sales. Wedbush does already expect that iPhone sales will improve with the release of the iPhone 16 range, because it believes that there is a pent-up demand for upgrading.

Previously, it's predicted 220 million to 230 million iPhone sales across the whole of 2024. Based on its new estimates of the demand from upgraders likely to buy the iPhone 16, Wedbush's new note estimates a total of up to 270 million iPhones sold for the year.

Chart of Apple's stock price history and analyst price targets over time, marked with various ratings and dates. Wedbush's price target for Apple over the years (Source: Wedbush)

Then, too, it notes that Apple's Services are strong and growing at double-digit rates. Plus Apple has what Wedbush describes as the strongest installed base of any company in the world.

It believes that with 2.2 billion iOS devices in active use, that Apple is going to be able to monetize that base further than it already has.

While Wedbush doesn't elaborate on this issue of monetizing existing users, Apple has many opportunities to do so. It can work to increase how many users subscribe to Apple TV+, or its iCloud tiers, or the Apple One bundle — and it can also increase the cost of each of these.

Separately, investment firm Morgan Stanley has recently also come out saying that overall the cancellation of the Apple Car is a good move for the company.



15 Comments

NYC362 5 Years · 108 comments

I believe that as iPhone sales in China decrease, much of that will be made up by increasing sales in India with an ever growing Apple footprint there along with a younger and wealthier demographic trend.

The cancellation of the Car was not a $10 billion loss, much of that research into full self driving systems can and will be applied to various AI technologies and will also be a long term win for Apple. 

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twolf2919 3 Years · 161 comments

With respect to "pent-up demand for iPhone 16", Wedbush made the same claim when justifying their price target before iPhone 15 came out.  I guess a broken clock is going to be right  at least twice a day?  I have no idea why analysts expect AI to be a big growth generator for Apple..  Apple has been using AI for  years (e.g. object  and people recognition in Photos).  All Apple can really do with the latest AI craze, generative AI with large language models, is to improve Siri.  While Siri needs a lot of improvement, I don't see people flocking to iPhone, even if she gets a lot better  as an assistant.

Analysts are just grasping at straws when it comes to Apple.  The fact is that it's been 8 years since Apple has produced a great new mass market product that  helped its bottom line - AiirPods (2016) and Apple Watch (2015).  The recently announced Vision Pro won't contribute meaningfully to growth for years.  So AAPL investors have nothing to look forward to.  Although services are growing well,  the gains there won't be more than the stagnation and outright reduction in iPhone sales that are  seen now.

20% of Apple's sales come from China alone.  The economic situation there as well as the geopolitical rivalry with the US won't be resolved anytime soon, so I doubt sales there will improve in the near future.  Another poster mentioned India growth offsetting China sales losses.  I don't believe that.  First of all, sales in India are tiny in comparison.  Yes, they are growing nicely, but it'll be years before they approach the sales volume in China.

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avon b7 21 Years · 8125 comments

twolf2919 said:
With respect to "pent-up demand for iPhone 16", Wedbush made the same claim when justifying their price target before iPhone 15 came out.  I guess a broken clock is going to be right  at least twice a day?  I have no idea why analysts expect AI to be a big growth generator for Apple..  Apple has been using AI for  years (e.g. object  and people recognition in Photos).  All Apple can really do with the latest AI craze, generative AI with large language models, is to improve Siri.  While Siri needs a lot of improvement, I don't see people flocking to iPhone, even if she gets a lot better  as an assistant.

Analysts are just grasping at straws when it comes to Apple.  The fact is that it's been 8 years since Apple has produced a great new mass market product that  helped its bottom line - AiirPods (2016) and Apple Watch (2015).  The recently announced Vision Pro won't contribute meaningfully to growth for years.  So AAPL investors have nothing to look forward to.  Although services are growing well,  the gains there won't be more than the stagnation and outright reduction in iPhone sales that are  seen now.

20% of Apple's sales come from China alone.  The economic situation there as well as the geopolitical rivalry with the US won't be resolved anytime soon, so I doubt sales there will improve in the near future.  Another poster mentioned India growth offsetting China sales losses.  I don't believe that.  First of all, sales in India are tiny in comparison.  Yes, they are growing nicely, but it'll be years before they approach the sales volume in China.

On the AI front a lot is happening in the sector. Generative AI is moving wickedly fast. Sora (for videos) is very impressive even as a first release demo kind of 'look at what we can do now' technology.

Tiny Large Language Models are gaining traction as is the ability to not only recognize an image or face but describe it too (contextualisation included).

Ameca was quite popular at MWC and although it's a bit of a touring side show at lots of fairs nowadays, it does give you a peak of how even the most basic AI models can almost 'convince' you once paired with something human looking and basic movement.

https://www.dailymotion.com/video/x8tkp4y

I don't see Apple getting into robotics but AI will be important this year on many levels. 

Past efforts were the same, or quite possibly less, than what others have delivered with ML etc so they need to deliver something to claw back mindset.

That is what Tim Cook is trying to do with early references to WWDC and the seemingly frantic activity within Apple to get something out the door. 

hammeroftruth 17 Years · 1366 comments

avon b7 said:
That is what Tim Cook is trying to do with early references to WWDC and the seemingly frantic activity within Apple to get something out the door. 

What frantic activity are you talking about?
There are numerous AI products and projects that they have been working on for years. Just because it’s not a known consumer product does not mean that they haven’t been working on AI, or whatever Apple wants to call it. 


This sounds like more of some reporter or analyst just deciding that because Apple has not made any references to AI, means they haven’t been working on anything related to the technology and were caught flat footed. 

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avon b7 21 Years · 8125 comments

avon b7 said:
That is what Tim Cook is trying to do with early references to WWDC and the seemingly frantic activity within Apple to get something out the door. 
What frantic activity are you talking about?
There are numerous AI products and projects that they have been working on for years. Just because it’s not a known consumer product does not mean that they haven’t been working on AI, or whatever Apple wants to call it. 
This sounds like more of some reporter or analyst just deciding that because Apple has not made any references to AI, means they haven’t been working on anything related to the technology and were caught flat footed. 

'seemingly' frantic. 

Lack of any real shipping equivalent product. 

Tim Cook going on record as 'pre-announcing' AI moves for this year. 

Some people (with apparent insider information) here saying that Apple was basically putting the pedal to the metal to get AI baked into some products. No. Not just the ML stuff. 

Car project shut down with claims that many employees will be transferred to AI teams.

No one can know for sure of course but the lack of any equivalent shipping product (to what has been sucking all the news time up) is obviously telling. 

Saying Apple has been 'doing ML for years' is saying nothing. So has everybody else.

What markets react to is, tangible, shipping products and Apple is still to deliver where others are already advancing. 

As things stand, WWDC will see important AI announcements. Why do you think Tim Cook put that particular piece of information into the public domain? 

Apple went from not even wanting to utter the letters 'AI' last year to planting them straight up into this year's WWDC! That is some change of tack. 

Once those announcements are made, what will happen? Will they start rolling out products immediately? Will they wait for this year's product refresh/iOS release? Will they be ready or released as beta? 

September/October is still a long way off but competitors have been shipping AI related solutions for a while now and that is why we see almost daily news pieces on this or that advance and right across the technology board. Almost in parallel, we see news pieces that reflect on Apple's missing AI products. 

We see those because they haven't been released. 

MWC concluded just days ago and it was all about 5.5G and AI. 

Generative AI is everywhere. It's now moving into the video realm. 

Tiny Large Language Models are here. 

Work on existing LLMs is advancing at an incredible pace. 

Where has Apple been for the last two years in this area? Claiming they are working on it and always have been is saying nothing. 

Everybody has been working on it. The difference is that all the big players except Apple have something to show for it. 

That's why it's been in the news for what seems like forever now.