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Apple (AAPL) CEO Tim Cook delivered the keynote at the company's 2025 WWDC, unveiling changes to the iPhone maker's software system, iPad advancements, and some updates on artificial intelligence (AI).
Creative Strategies CEO and principal analyst Ben Bajarin joins Market Domination with Josh Lipton to share his takeaways from the event.
To watch more expert insights and analysis on the latest market action, check out more Market Domination here.
Apple's big software show, Ben, it kicked off today. You were listening. What did you make of what you heard, Ben? Did you hear anything that surprised you?
Yeah, I mean, I think the biggest surprise, obviously, as you guys pointed out was the, uh, the iPad update. Um, I think a lot of people have been looking for, what we'll just say, more pro-level features to the iPad. So that's things around multitasking, um, some of the better file management. I mean, you know, candidly, I think people wanted iPad to be more like a Mac, and I think that's really what they did. Um, now you've got this sort of multimodal opportunity. Use the best of iPad, have some of those Mac features built in to do a lot more productivity or even, even heavy work versus light work, right, which has sort of been the, the debate. Um, wasn't really surprised about any of the, the, the larger UI schemes. Um, and I think there was just more clarity here around where Apple's priorities are in terms of eliminating friction, making these features more helpful. And, and I thought, well, yes, not really a whole lot around kind of the front end of AI. So like how you'd interact with it. There's a lot of back end of AI that's happening from Apple. I think they've been talking about this for years, just not saying it's something like Apple intelligence. And at a fundamental level at exposing what's useful or making AI useful at a system level and then for developers is kind of the theme where I think we're, we're now at that foundation that they'll build upon that type of a strategy, you know, from a back end at a system level.
Ben, all of this sounds pretty incremental, right? Not necessarily, um, retail customer facing to your point. Does this move the needle at all in terms of our refresh cycle?
I mean, I think the refresh cycles is just going to stay standard like it is. I don't think we're going to see a fundamental change to any of those forecasts or any of this kind of pull in. Um, you know, again, I think the dynamic between iPad as a productivity device, even its opportunities in enterprise, they obviously sell, you know, north of 10 million, you know, plus iPads, um, per quarter. That's, that's a good unit volume. I think, you know, expanding that, making it more attractive across the vector, uh, will be super interesting to see when it comes to hardware sales. Um, but we're, we're still not expecting, and I didn't expect any of this to change our opinion of, um, you know, just the refresh cycle staying as it is, iPhones relatively flat. Um, you know, we, we don't really see that changing, and to be honest, like we've talked about before, I'm not sure we ever see kind of this upgrades, you know, super cycle, like we have before AI or, or not.
So what, what, Ben, if, if you don't get that super cycle, what drives this stock higher? What gets investors excited?
I mean, I think there's a combination of the device categories that they're in, right? So I think looking at other areas, I've always been bullish on Mac in the enterprise. I think they have a lot of upside there. I, I'm now more, you know, bullish on iPads opportunity or iPad Pro, which was a small volume of overall iPad shipments to, to go into that pro category. So I think there's ancillary hardware. I think there comes a time, right? We're just not there yet where they're setting the stage and this foundation leads to what they'll do with AR, VR, whatever we want to call that category smart AI glasses. Um, we're just not there yet, but as why I come back to the foundation that's being laid for the next 10 years, uh, both software and hardware. And I think you're seeing some of those seeds right now be planted in, in these new versions of the, the software for the platforms.