Apple is putting everything into AI smartphones

Apple is going for broke with AI smartphones and plans to put its best chip inside its entire range of iPhones and iPads, all to support Apple Intelligence, a tipster has claimed.

While it is important not to read too much into a single, unsourced, unverified claim, and while the real-world implementation of the plan might differ from the speculation, Apple does have everything to play for. 

The shift to AI is real and it is happening

That’s because if it does manage to stake space at the cutting-edge of the AI device replacement wave, it should accelerate its growth in market share. This is why Apple intends to put the soon-to-ship A18 chip inside all iPhones, starting with the iPhone 16 series this fall and next year’s iPhone SE. 

It needs to do so to ensure new devices all support Apple Intelligence, including new features not yet announced. (Apple Intelligence currently requires an A17 Pro chip inside an iPhone to run, or M-series processors inside Macs.)

Apple knows that the future of Apple Intelligence, as with any other product, relies on it delivering great customer experiences. That means it doesn’t want people using its service to have experiences hampered by older devices. The company has previously clarified that the computational power required to run Apple Intelligence on device requires the best-available chip.

Diverting company resources

The company also seems to understand what’s at stake. It already seems to be cancelling some of its R&D projects, (including Apple Car) and scaling back on Apple TV shows to divert dollars into AI research. That represents the importance the company, once thought to lag the industry, now places on the sector and likely echoes the scale at which it is pivoting to build support for AI inside all its products, hardware, software and operating systems.

Apple has been following the road toward AI for many years. Siri was just one facet of that trip, data detectors in iCal/Mail another, while the move to dump Intel in favor of AI-friendly Apple chips replete with their own Neural Engine all help show its embrace of AI has been intentional.

On the back foot (slightly)

What caught Apple by surprise was the speed with which OpenAI’s Chat GPT was adopted. My hunch is the company planned to continue to deploy machine intelligence/AI across its products in an intentional way over a longer time period.

But the success of generative AI (genAI) caused Apple to accelerate its own journey, which means bringing all its products up to speed, not just to cope with what Apple Intelligence will do from iOS 18 on, but what it will be able to achieve in four years’ time. To get to that point, Apple must leapfrog some of its technologies, and the M4-powered iPad Pro (set to be followed by other M4-equipped Macs later this year) can be seen as evidence of that. 

But still with cards to play

The new A18 processor inside the upcoming iPhone range will presumably provide another big leap forward in computational capacity. That’s going to be essential to support Apple’s on-device vision for at least some Apple Intelligence features.

It is also worth noting that the A18 will simply build on the big lead the company still enjoys in terms of chip performance compared to rivals. This competitive edge is one Apple must exploit. AI is a profound and world-changing technology and the hype around AI PC and smartphone sales will not turn out to be entirely meaningless.

This is an inflection point at which new competitors appear, old empires fall, and new problems and opportunities emerge. Apple has lived through such points before. Today, it is leaning into everything it has already done to build a raft on which its survival depends.

Meanwhile, we get faster iPhones.

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