From iPhone 17 sales to the “super blue ocean of AI reasoning” Apple (AAPL.US) quietly embarks on a new bull market trajectory

The Zhitong Finance App learned that Wall Street financial giant Bank of America (Bank of America) said on Monday that the delivery cycle of the latest iPhone 17 smartphone series products released by Apple (AAPL.US) is still far higher than last year's iPhone models, and provided the latest update on last week's delivery data. Bank of America's latest research report unquestionably highlights that although the new iPhone 17 was criticized by some users for not being highlighted after the press conference, actual demand was very strong, driven by a full upgrade of AI functions and key performance. Among them, the standard version and Pro Max models were in the strongest demand — this also largely shows that Apple users who haven't switched for 4-5 years are starting to switch to the iPhone 17.

Furthermore, the logic that Apple's stock price has recently regained a strong upward trajectory is that when the market starts pricing, Apple will be a super winner in the “AI reasoning era.” According to a recent research report released by Bernstein (Bernstein), a well-known investment agency on Wall Street, the trillion-dollar “super blue ocean” that is expected to be brought by huge AI inference systems by 2030 should bring long-term benefits to these large technology companies that focus on IT hardware and consumer electronics, such as consumer electronics giant Apple.

Since September, Apple's stock price, which has been weak for most of this year, has rebounded strongly by more than 10%. As demand for the iPhone 17 is strong and the market begins to price Apple to benefit from the trillion-dollar “super blue ocean of artificial intelligence reasoning,” Wall Street's bullish sentiment about Apple is also getting stronger. Wall Street analysts who have covered Apple recently are generally optimistic that Apple's stock price will hit the $300 mark. As of the close of the US stock market on Monday, Apple's stock price closed at 254.430 US dollars, and the market capitalization stabilized at 3.8 trillion US dollars, second only to Nvidia and Microsoft.

The iPhone 17 series delivery cycle is still much higher than last year

Delivery time is significantly longer than last year, which is usually interpreted as the most important signal of “demand > supply”. Short-term sales expectations are too much of a catalyst.

Bank of America analyst Wamsi Mohan wrote in the latest research report to customers that as of September 29, overall statistics from Apple's official website and the websites of various partner operators showed that the iPhone 17 would take about 19 days to ship. “Compared to the initial 5-day lead time for the previous-generation iPhone, the iPhone 16 series, this shows a very strong demand for iPhone 17 series switches. ” Bank of America analyst Mohan said.

According to the Bank of America Research Report, looking further, the iPhone 17 standard model in the Chinese market has the longest delivery date of 25 days, while other international regions as a whole are about 18 days, highlighting the strong demand for the standard model. Furthermore, from a global perspective, the overall delivery cycle of the more expensive iPhone 17 Pro models and iPhone 17 Pro Max is basically similar to last year, but the Pro Max model delivery time is slightly higher than last year, and the Pro model is the same as last year.

According to channel data compiled by Bank of America, the iPhone 17 Pro delivery time was 14 days, while the iPhone 17 Max delivery time was as long as 21 days. Bank of America added that the availability of US operators seems to be superior to Apple's own delivery channels: directly purchased from Apple's platforms, the delivery cycle for Pro models is between two to three weeks, while the delivery cycle for US carriers is only about 9 days.

Bank of America analyst Mohan said that in the Chinese market, the iPhone 17 standard series may sell very well in the Chinese market due to government subsidies for consumer electronics products below 6,000 yuan and insufficient supply of iPhone Air due to eSIM factors.

However, Mohan said that channel data shows that the iPhone Air is “in sufficient supply” worldwide and that demand is not as popular as the iPhone 17 standard model, and the global average delivery date is only three days. “Shorter official Air delivery times may indicate higher initial inventory, as Apple is likely already anticipating strong demand for the iPhone Air,” analyst Mohan speculates.

AI reasoning dominates the trillion-dollar blue ocean

Needless to say, the global cloud computing giant Oracle, which recently announced a contract reserve of 455 billion US dollars that far exceeded market expectations, and the strong performance and future outlook announced by Broadcom, the global AI ASIC chip “super hegemon” in early September, greatly strengthened the “long-term bull market narrative” of AI inference and computing infrastructure sectors such as AI GPUs, ASICs, and HBM.

The demand for AI computing power brought about by generative AI application software and inference terminals dominated by AI agents with highly intelligent characteristics can be called a “sea of stars”, which is expected to drive the AI computing power infrastructure market to continue to show exponential growth. “AI inference systems” are also Hwang In-hoon's biggest source of future revenue. Nvidia CEO Hwang In-hoon also predicted that by 2030, AI infrastructure spending will reach 3 trillion to 4 trillion US dollars, and the scale and scope of the project will bring significant long-term growth opportunities to Nvidia.

“Although short-term market concerns about the AI bubble remain, we believe IT hardware and consumer electronics still have significant upside in the long term,” the team of analysts from Bernstein wrote. “Although there is a huge margin of uncertainty about the results, in our 2030 benchmark scenario, we conservatively set the estimated enterprise-side cost scale at around $1.3 trillion (meaning an expected CAGR of around 67% for the 2025-2030 period).”

“We consider continuous model improvements and iterations to be a key leading indicator, and we are reminded that hyperscale capital expenditure may be a lagging indicator. In addition to being positive about the long-term outlook, we also believe that the early signs relating to the recent boom in artificial intelligence are still healthy, and in general, we still have a positive view on this subject.” Bernstein's team of analysts said.

As far as Apple is concerned, the agency said that the tech giant, which has consumer electronics product lines such as iPhones and iPads, is “one of the best entrances to the artificial intelligence reasoning revolution.” Bernstein's team of analysts believes that the tech giant under Tim Cook is one of the tech giants with the best artificial intelligence layout in the sector and is most likely to benefit.

According to statistics, the number of active devices in the Apple ecosystem has reached 2.35 billion, which means that once inference capabilities are integrated at the system level, developers can “plug and play” to reach a large number of end users. This is the core AI engineering advantage of the “artificial intelligence portal” of Apple's end-side devices. Apple AI application tool - Apple Intelligence is designed by Apple to prioritize local operation, call a larger cloud AI model through Private Cloud Compute (PCC) when necessary, and “move” Apple's terminal security model to the cloud, providing verifiable transparency and minimal data residency, which is very attractive for constructing sensitive scenarios (personal and corporate data).

Apple CEO Tim Cook recently defended the iPhone's enduring and strong influence, saying that even with the emergence of complementary intelligent electronic devices, the iPhone will still be the core of people's lives in the era of artificial intelligence that is about to fully open.