During the company’s earnings call on 1 May, Cook admitted that the voice assistant’s smarter, chattier makeover is now being punted to iOS 19.
“We need more time to complete our work on these features so they meet our high-quality bar. We are making progress and look forward to getting these features into customers' hands.”
It’s been nearly a year since Apple trotted out plans for a more context-aware Siri as part of its AI push across iPhones, iPads and Macs. So far, punters have had to settle for a nicer UI, the ability to type to Siri, and some token follow-up smarts.
Cook wouldn’t offer any valid reason for the holdup, brushing it off with a vague “It’s just taking a bit longer than we thought.” This sidesteps recent mutterings from inside Cupertino, suggesting a management reshuffle may be to blame.
Apple, chief financial officer, Kevan Parekh tried to head off concerns about underfunding, claiming: “We’re continuing to grow our R&D investment, and so we definitely are making all the investments we think we need to enable our roadmap.”
Still, for all the AI promises at last year’s WWDC, users have had to be content with a smattering of gimmicks like Genmoji, Image Playground, and making movies from memory prompts. Cook tried to paper over the cracks with an upbeat summary of what had been delivered:
“From Writing Tools to connect to Chatgpt, Genmoji, Image Playground, the list goes on,” he chirped.
While the AI fairy dust hasn’t helped March quarter iPhone sales much, Jobs’ Mob did see a two per cent bump in handset revenue to $46.8 billion, mostly thanks to its budget-ish iPhone 16e. Overall, revenues grew five per cent year-on-year to $95.4 billion, with services and iPads doing most of the heavy lifting.
There was chatter about looming Trump tariffs, which could add an extra $900 million in costs for the June quarter. Cook said most iPhones flogged in the US now come from India, with Vietnam cranking out the bulk of the iPads, Macs, Apple Watches, and AirPods. Only products destined for other parts of the world are still made in China.
However that will be problematic for Donald Trump and his team who want manufacturing to come back to the US rather than just shift to another foreign country.
Even with the tariff time bomb, Parekh expects sales to increase again between April and June, hinting at low to mid-single-digit growth over last year’s $85.9 billion haul.