Apple (AAPL +3.52%) held its Worldwide Developer Conference (WWDC) this week, showcasing new features and developer tools. The excitement and anticipation were around long-awaited artificial intelligence (AI) features for its iPhones. Apple unveiled Siri AI, which is a more enhanced version of its personal assistant.
While that's a great sign that Apple is finally catching up to rivals, investors and analysts didn't appear all that impressed; the tech stock didn't surge on the news. Here's why Siri AI's launch may have been underwhelming.
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Siri AI isn't all that impressive
What might be the best part of Siri AI is that it considers personal context to act more like a real assistant, accessing emails and photos and answering queries in a more personalized way, rather than just providing generic answers. And it does this while keeping privacy and security top priority, ensuring the data isn't stored or accessible elsewhere.
However, there wasn't any groundbreaking feature that stood out. Apple's commitment and focus on privacy aren't a surprise, but given the delays in launching advanced AI features to catch up to rivals, there may have been hope for something much bigger than personal context. Siri AI effectively leaves many investors wanting more. It didn't offer much of a catalyst.
What's also problematic is that Siri AI won't be available everywhere, at least not yet. The new features won't be coming to users in China and the European Union, as tighter regulatory issues will delay the availability of Siri AI for the time being, effectively making it unavailable to a huge chunk of Apple users.
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Why Apple's stock may still be worth buying, anyway
Apple didn't introduce any new, amazing features that wowed the market at WWDC. It announced AI capabilities that users have long been able to achieve with chatbots, with the key difference that Apple AI places greater emphasis on privacy and security. Those are important things, of course, but not so exciting that the stock is going to surge in value.
However, Apple hasn't been leading in innovation for some time. The changes and advancements it has made to its products in recent years have been modest and perhaps even a bit underwhelming. And yet, that hasn't hurt sales or the stock's performance. In five years, the stock has more than doubled, and it's still trading at a premium -- 35 times trailing earnings.
Apple's loyal fanbase may be content with Siri AI, as it shows the company is taking AI seriously, albeit at a slower pace than its rivals. But over the years, Apple has taken the slow-and-steady approach and shown that it doesn't hurt the business; its customers may even value it. As a long-term investment, Apple's stock can still be a good buy, even if Siri AI may not seem all that exciting.
