That’s the bet underlying Bank of America’s latest Apple call.<\/p>\n
Wamsi Mohan, an analyst at BofA, increased his price target on Apple to $380<\/strong> from $330<\/strong> and reiterated a Buy rating on May 26. The new target suggests 23% upside<\/strong> from Apple\u2019s price of $308.82 as of May 26, according to the article.<\/p>\n The argument is not that Apple is suddenly like OpenAI, Anthropic or Google.<\/p>\n The thing is, the AI sector may be heading into Apple\u2019s home turf, the iPhone.<\/p>\n BofA says the next phase of AI will shift value from the company with the best model to the company that controls the trusted endpoint <\/strong>where user intent, identity, payments, apps, permissions and privacy already meet.<\/p>\n For Apple that goal is the iPhone.<\/p>\n But that complicates Apple\u2019s next AI test beyond just making Siri smarter.<\/p>\n For the bull case to work, Apple needs Siri to become the execution layer <\/strong>of the iPhone. And it needs developers to make their applications callable by that system.<\/p>\n \u201cTo win, Apple needs to evolve Siri into the orchestration layer of the iPhone,\u201d Mohan wrote in the report.<\/p>\n BofA\u2019s analysis is on agentic AI, a move from AI that answers questions to AI that does things.<\/p>\n That difference matters to investors.<\/p>\n A chatbot can recommend a restaurant. An AI agent may check a user\u2019s schedule, discover a nearby reservation, make the reservation, text a contact and confirm payment.<\/p>\n BofA says that smartphones are the natural control point for that kind of AI, as they already have identification, authentication, payments, location, camera, microphone, contacts, calendar, messages, apps and real-time context integrated.<\/p>\n Apple is in a very strong position with its control of the iPhone, Apple silicon, iOS, App Store distribution, Apple ID, Face ID, Apple Pay, Wallet and privacy architecture.<\/p>\n The paper says Apple\u2019s moat is built on two layers: silicon for local inference and iOS to control context, app access, permissions, authentication, payments and trust.<\/p>\n That is where App Intents<\/strong> becomes crucial.<\/p>\n App Intents offers developers an opportunity to expose app functionality to Siri, Spotlight, Shortcuts and system experiences, says BofA. For Apple to succeed, that foundation needs to evolve into a comprehensive agent-action system covering travel, commerce, productivity, payments, messaging, files, calendar, media, and enterprise workflows.<\/p>\n In other words, Apple wants apps to be machine-callable<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Related: Bank of America resets Apple stock price target on AI update<\/strong><\/p>\n Siri is more powerful if developers expose helpful actions. If not, Siri will stay confined to Apple\u2019s own apps and a constrained range of workflows.<\/p>\n That\u2019s the true execution risk<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Apple may own the phone, the OS and the payment layer. But agentic AI only works if third-party apps become fulfillment endpoints that Siri can call safely and reliably.<\/p>\n The dollar figures in BofA\u2019s study make the point clear.<\/p>\n In a base case, Mohan predicts agentic Siri could bring $15 billion to $30 billion <\/strong>in incremental fiscal 2030 revenue. In a bull situation, the opportunity grows to $40 billion to $65 billion<\/strong>.<\/p>\n The firm divides that opportunity into six potential sources of revenue: a paid Apple Intelligence Pro subscription, default model placement or routing costs, App Store agent-commerce take rates, Apple Pay and Wallet routing fees, advertising in agent results and an iCloud+ AI layer.<\/p>\n In the basic case, BofA predicts 50 million to 75 million <\/strong>Apple Intelligence Pro members at $15 per month<\/strong>, or $9 billion to $14 billion <\/strong>in revenue.<\/p>\n It also projects $200 billion to $300 billion <\/strong>in agent-mediated gross merchandise value at a take rate of 1% to 2%<\/strong>, creating another $2 billion to $6 billion <\/strong>opportunity.<\/p>\n The bull case is bigger. BofA predicts 100 million to 125 million <\/strong>Apple Intelligence Pro subscribers may generate $18 billion to $23 billion<\/strong>, while $400 billion to $600 billion <\/strong>in agent-mediated gross merchandise value could yield$8 billion to $18 billion<\/strong>.<\/p>\n That\u2019s why developer adoption is important.<\/p>\n The new App Store could not only be about what app gets downloaded. Perhaps it is which app Siri uses to respond when a user asks for something to be done.<\/p>\n BofA also calculates the infrastructural load underlying that opportunity.<\/p>\n The company thinks a typical agentic iPhone request would consume about 1,900 tokens <\/strong>weighted. A moderate agentic task could take 1,000 to 3,000 tokens<\/strong>, a heavy workflow 3,000 to 12,000 tokens<\/strong>.<\/p>\n More AI:<\/strong><\/p>\n In its base assumption, BofA expects about 1.36 billion AI iPhone users <\/strong>making 10 requests every day <\/strong>with about 2,000 tokens per request <\/strong>by fiscal 2030. That\u2019s almost 9.9 quadrillion tokens a year<\/strong>, with nearly half processed through the cloud.<\/p>\n Hence the significance of Apple’s mixed strategy. Apple will need to rely on on-device processing, Private Cloud Compute and third-party compute to create a powerful AI experience, says the research.<\/p>\n The economics are very different depending on where those requests run.<\/p>\n But if Apple depends too much on third-party models, AI might become a variable-cost headache. Apple could safeguard margins and control more of the user experience by doing more work on devices or via its own cloud infrastructure.<\/p>\n Photo by picture alliance on Getty Images<\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n The biggest danger to BofA\u2019s argument isn\u2019t whether Apple has enough consumers.<\/p>\n The question is whether Apple is able to modify user behavior fast enough.<\/p>\n BofA estimates Apple\u2019s iPhone installed base might hit 1.5 billion by 2026 <\/strong>and 2 billion or so by 2030<\/strong>. The company also possesses the building blocks for a trusted AI layer, such as hardware, software, app distribution, identity, payments and privacy.<\/p>\n But Siri has missed expectations for years and BofA admits that market mistrust is legitimate.<\/p>\n If consumers develop daily routines with ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude or other huge language models, Apple may still hold the hardware but steal less of the AI value pool.<\/p>\n This puts pressure on Apple’s plan for developers.<\/p>\n App Intents have to be more than a technological framework for the firm. It needs to be the agentic version of App Store distribution<\/strong>, where developers fight not just for downloads, but for the right to be called up by Siri when customers want stuff done.<\/p>\n If Apple succeeds, Siri is more than a voice-based assistant. It becomes the control layer for apps, payments, commerce and personal context in the iPhone.<\/p>\n If Apple misses, the $380 price target would look less like a projection and more like a reminder of how much execution remains.<\/p>\n Related: Apple makes quiet AI move that will change iPhones, Vision Pro<\/strong><\/p>\n #Apples #test #Siri<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Apple (AAPL) doesn\u2019t have to win the artificial intelligence model competition to win the next phase of AI. That’s the bet underlying Bank of America’s latest Apple call. Wamsi Mohan,… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":4837,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[246],"tags":[1671,7283,3110],"class_list":["post-4836","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-popular","tag-apples","tag-siri","tag-test"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4836","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=4836"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4836\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/4837"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=4836"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=4836"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.fintechpulse8.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=4836"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Apple\u2019s Siri plan depends on app developers<\/h2>\n
Bank of America sees a large Apple revenue opportunity<\/h2>\n
Key Apple AI figures from BofA<\/h3>\n
\n
\n
![](\"https:\/\/www.thestreet.com\/.image\/NDA6MDAwMDAwMDAzMDU5Nzc0\/14-may-2026-china-peking-apple-ceo-tim-cook-l-speaks-with-nvidia-ceo-jensen-huang-in-the-great-hall-of-the-people-us-president-trump-is-accompanied-by-a-large-business-delegation-on-his-visit-to-china.jpg?profile=rss\")
Apple\u2019s AI opportunity comes with a catch<\/h2>\n