New Siri debuts, but stock price falls—Wall Street isn’t buying Apple’s “AI strategy”?

``` Apple unveiled a major AI upgrade plan at its annual Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC), but Wall Street isn’t buying it. According to a report by Wallstreetcn, on Monday, June 8th Eastern Time, Apple held its annual WWDC, officially releasing the next-generation Apple Intelligence platform and launching the much-anticipated AI-powered voice assistant Siri, attempting to prove to investors and developers that its AI strategy is back on track. Before the event began, boosted by high expectations for AI advancements, Apple’s share price hit a historic high with significant cumulative gains. However, as the contents of the conference were gradually revealed, the stock price kept falling. Apple's shares closed down nearly 2% on Monday, underperforming the broader U.S. stock market, showing a typical pattern of "buy the rumor, sell the news." Some Wall Street analysts believe this release is the "right step" for Apple to address shortcomings in its AI strategy, but some investors feel the related updates were already widely anticipated beforehand, making it hard to deliver a real surprise. Notably, this WWDC is also the last developer conference attended by Tim Cook. Apple Senior Vice President John Ternus will take over as CEO in September this year. Siri Gets an Overhaul, AI Capabilities See a Major Leap At this WWDC, Apple carried out the most extensive revamp of Siri since its launch. The new Siri centers on AI, boasting stronger conversational abilities, supporting full-system content search, cross-app operations, and on-screen content awareness. Users can directly ask questions about current screen content without manual app switching. In privacy protection, Apple continues its consistent approach: AI models can run locally on devices or utilize private cloud servers, with the latter encrypting data to ensure that even Apple itself cannot access user data. The new Siri also introduces a dedicated app supporting seamless cross-device conversation continuity, allowing users to retain complete conversation context across devices for deep search. Additionally, new functionalities extend to AirPods and CarPlay. While advancing its self-developed AI models, Apple has chosen to bring in Google Gemini as the underlying support for the new Siri, and released the second version of Apple Foundation Models. This move means Apple is leaving the large language model R&D competition to tech giants like Alphabet, focusing itself on ecosystem integration and user experience optimization. Apple said the new OS and AI features are now open for developer testing and will roll out to a broader user base later this year. Analysts point out that this strategy allows Apple to avoid massive capital expenditures in the LLM arms race while leveraging its huge installed device base to bring more users into its high-margin services business. AI Expectations Gap: Apple Still Playing Catch-Up Although this release covered the new "Golden Gate" OS and Apple Intelligence updates, some investors remain skeptical about Apple’s AI progress. John Belton, portfolio manager at Gabelli Funds, said in a CNBC interview on Monday: In the first wave of AI—the era of generative AI—I think Apple to some extent missed out. The hope now is that they can truly catch up in the age of Agentic AI. In the past two years, Apple has made incremental progress in advancing AI features but has also faced multiple setbacks, most notably Siri’s failure to achieve any significant upgrade for a long time. In terms of stock performance, even though Apple pulled back on Monday, its cumulative gain since the start of the year still reached 11%, outpacing the S&P 500’s roughly 8% gain over the same period. The bullish team led by Wedbush analyst Dan Ives still holds a positive outlook on Apple, believing this release lays an important foundation for Apple’s AI strategy. This WWDC has also drawn extra attention due to personnel changes. It is Tim Cook’s last appearance as CEO at Apple’s developer conference, with his successor John Ternus set to officially take over in September this year. Some investors, while assessing Apple’s AI strategy, are also watching for possible directional shifts following the leadership transition. Risk Warning and Disclaimer The market has risks; investment must be cautious. This article does not constitute personal investment advice and does not take into account the particular investment objectives, financial situation, or needs of any individual user. Users should consider whether any opinions, views, or conclusions in this article are suitable for their specific circumstances. Investment made accordingly is at your own risk. ```