It's become a trendy position to take: Apple is well behind other tech companies like Google and Samsung when it comes to AI in smartphones. Apple overly hyped Apple Intelligence but underdelivered. To make matters worse, the AI-powered Siri has been delayed until next spring. It's not just that Apple is late to the AI party, Apple also came wearing inappropriate clothes.
This is the one place where Apple has been rewarded for lagging in AI
What I mean is that Apple is not only behind Google and Samsung in making AI features available to its smartphone customers, but Google, and to a lesser degree Samsung, have added AI capabilities that are useful and easy to find. When they work, that is. While the Magic Cue AI feature is supposed to deliver information to Pixel users proactively, this has not yet worked as perfectly as Pixel users might have hoped. Still when it does run smoothly, being given information from your messages, calendar, and emails without asking for it tops the capability of the iPhone to make that email you've written sound as though it was composed by Shakespeare.
Will the iPhone ever surpass the others in AI capabilities?
Yes. Apple will eventually do AI better than rivals.
20%
No. Apple is just too far behind the others.
80%
Still, there is one place where Apple's position in AI isn't considered a negative and is, in fact, a positive. Surprisingly, that is the stock market. This month, the market experienced a sell-off of some tech stocks, especially those heavily involved in AI. Nvidia has dropped 8.08% this month to date, Google parent Alphabet is off 2.58%, Microsoft is down 1.47%, and Amazon is 3.90% in the red this month. Apple, on the other hand, is ahead .75% during November.
Apple's shares outperformed those of its peers during November. | Image credit-Sherwood
One reason for these results is that Apple is spending much less than the other companies. For example, Microsoft, Amazon, Google, and Meta combined to spend $100 billion on property and equipment during the last quarter. Apple, by comparison, spent only $3 billion during the same quarter. Remember when AI dominated Apple's 2024 iPhone event for the iPhone 16 series? With this year's event, AI wasn't mentioned at all.
Apple reportedly has a deal with Google for a custom Gemini LLM to help power AI Siri
Apple is reportedly going to be using a custom 1.2 trillion parameter artificial intelligence model of Google's Gemini Large Language Model (LLM) to help power AI Siri. Compare that to the 150 billion parameter model that is used with the cloud-based version of Apple Intelligence. The deal will reportedly see Apple pay Google $1 billon. The bottom line is that unlike the other companies, Apple is not spending as much as the others on AI; this has helped prop up its stock since it isn't constantly on the hot seat dealing with questions from analysts about all the money being spent on AI and asked to explain precisely what it expects to accomplish spending all of that money.
Many iPhone users are awaiting iOS 26.4, which is when Apple is expected to introduce its AI-powered version of Siri. That update would allow Siri to access your email, messages, and calendar in order to supply tiy with answers to your personal queries. While this sounds very similar to Pixel's Magic Cue, the latter is supposed to deliver this information without being asked to do so. Siri needs to receive a query to respond.
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In a year from now, things could be very different; tech moves fast as we all know. Siri could be greatly improved and an AI powerhouse. Apple might develop helpful AI features similar to the Pixel's Camera Coach which uses AI to direct a Pixel user how to take a better photograph. But the one thing that Apple has to learn is that phone owners want AI to deliver capabilities that are useful and help them get through the day.
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Alan, an ardent smartphone enthusiast and a veteran writer at PhoneArena since 2009, has witnessed and chronicled the transformative years of mobile technology. Owning iconic phones from the original iPhone to the iPhone 15 Pro Max, he has seen smartphones evolve into a global phenomenon. Beyond smartphones, Alan has covered the emergence of tablets, smartwatches, and smart speakers.
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