Apple (AAPL 0.53%) has disappointed investors this year. It has delayed some artificial intelligence (AI) features for its iPhones until next year, and that has resulted in a lot of bearishness around the business as there are rival phones with advanced AI capabilities already available.
Shares of Apple are down more than 21% thus far in 2025 (as of June 13), with its valuation dipping below the $3 trillion mark.
AI is a hot topic these days, with consumers seeking the latest tech on their phones to help with many day-to-day tasks. However, Apple recently published a report about AI that could shed some light as to why it may not be leading the charge and investing as heavily in next-gen technologies as other tech companies.
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Apple may not be convinced of AI's potential
Researchers at Apple have been testing multiple AI reasoning models, and while they have seen that they can perform better than standard models, they fail as tasks become more complex.
As a result, the researchers believe that there are limits to the reasoning that AI can achieve, and they don't appear to be as convinced of its abilities as the general public. They found that the models couldn't follow steps in complex tasks and appeared to rely heavily on the familiarity of data, as opposed to applying advanced reasoning skills.
AI chatbots have become more sophisticated because they have been trained on existing data, but the ability for them to truly reason like humans is by no means a certainty. If Apple isn't convinced of the potential that AI possesses, that may be part of the reason it hasn't been investing as heavily in these types of technologies as its peers.
Even if Apple is right, investors have a right to be worried
Whether or not AI can reason like a human doesn't excuse the fact that Apple has fallen well behind other companies in terms of innovation. While Apple has made changes to the look and feel of its icons with its Liquid Glass design, the company's newest iPhones haven't given consumers a compelling reason to upgrade their devices. Apple's product sales over the six-month period ending March 29 have totaled $166.7 billion -- up just 2% from the same period last year. And iPhone revenue during that stretch was nearly unchanged.
Lack of growth and innovation is a big problem for Apple these days. Regardless of whether it's completely sold on AI or not, the company needs to be doing more in advancing its phones so they don't fall behind the competition. Things like cross-app awareness, extracting information from photos to fill in forms, and integrating with third-party apps are some of the AI features that could be coming to iPhones next year. But whether that will be sufficient to keep up with rivals is questionable.
While the company has built up a strong ecosystem of products and services, the danger is that customers may eventually see a reason to jump ship toward more innovative devices.
Is Apple stock a buy on weakness?
Apple's stock has struggled this year, but it's still not a terribly cheap buy, trading at 31 times its trailing earnings. At that kind of multiple, investors might expect to see much more growth from the business. I believe that a discount is warranted for Apple stock, given the company's lack of innovation and growth.
While the business is still robust and generating fantastic free cash flow and profits, its future growth is questionable, and that's a big reason investors are ditching Apple for other growth stocks instead. It can still make for a good long-term buy, but at an elevated valuation, I would look for other investments to buy.
