Written by Yang Jianyong

During the Jobs era, Apple was seen as a benchmark in consumer electronics, leading the global smartphone industry and boasting strong global competitiveness. It was the world's best-selling high-end smartphone brand. However, under Tim Cook's leadership, Apple lost the innovative prowess of the Jobs era, relying mainly on its three main products: iPhone, iPad, and Mac. Nevertheless, it must be acknowledged that Cook is a shrewd businessman who has shined in the capital market, making Apple the first company in the world to surpass a market value of $3 trillion.

However, with the development of AI technology, OpenAI ushered in a new era of generative AI. Compared to technology giants like NVIDIA and Microsoft, Apple is clearly lagging behind in the direction of artificial intelligence. It is worth mentioning that at this year's WWDC, Apple announced AI-related technological advancements to prove that it is not lagging behind in artificial intelligence.

Unfortunately, at the WWDC2024 event, Apple demonstrated AI functions but failed to win the favor of investors. Its share price fell by 1.91%, and its market value was $2.96 trillion. Due to the lack of revolutionary innovations in the iPhone, not only did its market value fall below $3 trillion, but its revenue was also sluggish and growth was weak.

Financial report data shows that in fiscal year 2023, Apple's revenue was $383.285 billion, down 2.8% year-on-year. iPhone's revenue was $200.5 billion, down 2.38%. It is worth noting that while smartphone growth has recovered, iPhone sales have dropped significantly. According to Canalys data, in the first quarter of 2024, the global smartphone market grew 10% year-on-year, reaching 296.2 million units, exceeding market expectations. Among them, Apple's shipments were 48.7 million units, down 16% year-on-year.

It is noteworthy that with the advent of the era of generative AI, the global smartphone industry has entered the era of AI phones. A report from Canalys pointed out that under the impetus of AI technology, the transformation potential of smartphones with generative AI capabilities (AI phones)预示着移动通信行业将进入一个新时代。 It predicts that in 2024, 16% of global smartphone shipments will be AI phones, and by 2028, this proportion will surge to 54%.

Driven by consumer demand for enhanced functions such as AI assistants and edge processing, the AI phone market is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 63% from 2023 to 2028.

In the era of AI phones, Apple is striving to catch up with its competitors in the field of artificial intelligence, especially by endowing Siri with new capabilities and releasing large models for writing tools.

Additionally, since Apple introduced Siri to the iPhone in 2011, it pioneered a new mode of human-computer interaction by enabling conversations similar to those between humans. Initially, Siri became a target of teasing for many Apple fans and became a focal point of worldwide attention. However, over the past decade, Siri's functional improvements have been quite limited. It can be said that as the first company to launch a smart assistant, Apple can be described as "getting up early but arriving late to the party".

At WWDC, Apple unveiled Apple Intelligence, its first generative AI big model. Based on personal scenarios, it leverages the powerful capabilities of generative models to provide useful and relevant intelligent functions tailored to users' needs. It is deeply integrated into iOS 18, iPadOS 18, and Mac Sequoia, leveraging Apple's chip capabilities in language and image understanding and creation. It can perform various cross-app operations while simplifying and accelerating users' daily tasks based on personal scenarios.

"We use a unique approach to combine generative AI with personal usage scenarios to achieve truly beneficial intelligent functions," said Tim Cook. Meanwhile, with the help of Apple Intelligence, Siri's integration with the system experience is more seamless. Siri will have the ability to achieve full intelligence based on users' personal and device-side information.

Most significantly, Apple announced a partnership with OpenAI to integrate its ChatGPT, enabling users to directly utilize ChatGPT's special functions, including its understanding of images and documents, saving users the trouble of switching between different tools. Moreover, ChatGPT will be integrated into Apple's Writing Tools, which can be invoked system-wide, assisting users in generating content based on current topics. When using the Compose function, users can also utilize ChatGPT's image tools to generate a wide variety of images, achieving a combination of text and images.

Finally, with the emergence of ChatGPT, artificial intelligence has entered the era of generative AI, igniting a new round of AI competition globally. Various technology giants have launched their own AI big model services. In this era, NVIDIA and Microsoft are undoubtedly the biggest winners.

The development of AI big models by various technology giants relies heavily on NVIDIA's AI platform. This has led to a shortage of NVIDIA chips, making them highly sought-after. Due to market tightness, not only has revenue grown exponentially, but its share price has also been climbing steadily in the capital market, reaching a market value of $3 trillion. For Microsoft, it has leveraged ChatGPT to improve its product services, resulting in strong revenue growth powered by AI. Meanwhile, its market value has also hit a new high this year, reaching $3.18 trillion. Of course, there are significant risks behind this rapid growth, but the core reason for the continuous rise in the capital market lies in investors' optimistic outlook on the commercial prospects of AI.