Apple gains are still limited by a range between $213 and $217 per share, except on initial take-off days on June 11-12 when it just updated all-time highs to show a beautiful number of $220.20 at some moment. It is unsurprising that Wall Street crowds are not in a rush to touch it again, not to mention testing the next psychological milestone at $225. Although this will probably happen eventually, the iPhone maker is clearly lagging behind the major AI (artificial intelligence) rally, led by the current market's favourites, as a widely announced Apple Intelligence instead of usual artificial intelligence is mostly based on using Apple's partnership on several other companies' know-hows and NVIDIA's chips. Apple's assistant Siri mostly studies AI wisdom through the language, previously invented by OpenAI's ChatGPT, which is now Microsoft's best friend, even if Apple would benefit from this technology by its potential new iPhones sales increase.

Maybe that's why many investment houses are ready to revise their target price outlook for Apple at a slower pace compared to other IT segment leaders. They are not talking about its raising by factors like 1.4 or 1.5. As a bright example, JPMorgan analysts were careful enough to improve their Apple's share price projections from $225 to $245, explaining the move with iPhone sales forecast growth. The reputable financial group is now expecting 250 million devices to be sold in 2025 and 275 million in 2026, while a more or less modest annual profit surplus could be seen compared to the surge in sales driven by 5G technology in previous years. JPMorgan's forecast provides for a revision of EPS for fiscal years of 2025 and 2026 to $8.10 and $9.69 per share, respectively, which looks better than contrasts the market consensus after the WWDS, which predicts $7.26 and $7.64 per share for the same periods.

Apple delivered 234.6 million smartphones to the global market in 2023, surpassing Samsung by 8 million units and becoming the world's leading smartphone manufacturer. Samsung chief Jay Y. Lee discusses cooperation with Meta, Amazon and Qualcomm with their meeting topics including AI plus cloud services and chips. Meta's founder Mark Zuckerberg invited Jay Y. Lee to his home on June 18, and their discussions "spanned AI as well as virtual and augmented reality", Samsung Electronics officially noted in a statement. Lee also met with Amazon CEO Andy Jassy and Qualcomm CEO Cristiano Amon to discuss "cooperation in semiconductors, including memory chips for Amazon's data centres and cloud services as well as chip contract manufacturing for Qualcomm's mobile processors", Samsung added. The news suspended further purchases of Apple shares on Wall Street, leading to their decline within a couple of percent.

iPhone sales reportedly declined in China since the beginning of 2024. Some forecasts also try to take into account conservative estimates of the frequency of phone replacement by loyal customers, with a gradual two-year growth to maximum sales volumes, as there is also a chance for using some AI features in earlier iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max models. Based on these assessments, testing levels around $225 and then $230 per share seems to us as being a matter of several months, while soft purchases when (and if) descending to levels below $210 per share look more appropriate than an aggressive buy directly from current levels, which may be appropriate for smaller trading volumes.