Apple (AAPL) will host its annual WWDC developers conference on June 9 at its headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., giving us a glimpse at the various software updates it has planned for the year ahead.
While the company is sure to show off a variety of new features for its operating systems, Wall Street investors and analysts will be far more interested in how Apple is working to better compete in the AI space.
So far, the company has failed to match the kind of AI capabilities offered by rivals like Google (GOOG, GOOGL), Microsoft (MSFT), and Samsung. And with its planned generative AI-powered Siri delayed until sometime later this year, things aren’t looking so great for the iPhone maker.
“The expectation is that this is going to be probably the most uneventful WWDC in three or four years, and part of that is because … they don’t have a ton to show,” Deepwater Asset Management managing partner Gene Munster told Yahoo Finance.
That could prove damaging for the tech giant as competitors continue to roll out new generative AI apps and services. To fend them off, Apple will have to start showing it has what it takes to be a true AI player at WWDC.
Apple kicked off its AI push at WWDC 2024, revealing its Writing Tools, Genmoji, and image editing features. But the more powerful Siri was the centerpiece of the company’s announcements.
A revamped version of the voice assistant, the new Siri is supposed to be able to tap into your personal information and preferences to provide you with truly helpful responses to a wide range of queries.
The most famous example Apple cited was asking Siri when someone’s flight would land at the airport. The software would then be able to pull information about the flight from your email and check flight data to tell you when the plane would touch down.
But that version of Siri is delayed for the foreseeable future.
In March, Apple told Daring Fireball it expects to launch the upgraded Siri sometime this year, well later than originally anticipated. If Apple is going to put concerns about its AI expertise to bed, it’ll need to prove that it’s making progress on Siri — and provide a release date for the software.
“Apple is digging itself out of a hole,” Moor Insights & Strategy founder and chief analyst Patrick Moorhead told Yahoo Finance. “They got caught flat-footed with generative AI. I think they made a gallant effort at the last WWDC … but they just did not deliver on it. And what delivering on it means is generative AI spread across devices and different services out there.”
