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In late 2022, OpenAI’s launch of ChatGPT spurred an explosion of interest in the possibilities for artificial intelligence.

Within months, some of the biggest tech companies in the world, including Microsoft, Meta and Google, joined the party, launching their own AI chatbots and generative AI tools. By the end of 2023, Nvidia proved it was the only company in the world positioned to make huge amounts of money by powering those services.

Fast-forward to 2024, and a big theme in AI involves our consumer favorite gadgets, with tech companies trying to bring AI to phones and laptops.

Earlier this year, Samsung launched its AI-powered Galaxy S24 smartphone. Microsoft, partnering with companies like Dell, HP and Qualcomm, started selling a new crop of AI computers over the summer called Copilot+ PCs. A few weeks ago, Google launched its Pixel 9 series of AI phones.

So far, these new devices have underwhelmed. Rather than creating whole new experiences, they’ve introduced features for making it easier to edit photos, talk to a chatbot or provide live captions for videos. Then there’s Humane’s AI pin, a clip-on gizmo that launched in April and was immediately panned in reviews. By August, reports surfaced that daily returns were outpacing sales.

Apple will try to change the narrative.

On Monday, the company is expected to show off its new family of iPhones, packed with the AI capabilities announced in June. The system is called Apple Intelligence, and it’ll be rolling out over the coming months. Current Apple devices like the iPhone 15 Pro and some newer iPads and Macs will also have access to it.

Apple Intelligence's key role is adding 'stickiness' to the Apple ecosystem, analyst says

But Apple Intelligence will be free. So the company needs to convince hundreds of millions of iPhone customers that it’s time for an upgrade.

That’s what Wall Street is watching for when the latest iPhones go on sale this month. Will Apple Intelligence move more iPhones? Or will the post-pandemic sales slump continue?

“The reality is GenAI is still in its early stages and use cases that have been announced are probably only the tip of the iceberg of what’s to come,” said Nabila Popal, a mobile analyst at IDC.

Apple plans to roll out Apple Intelligence in stages. It will initially only be available in U.S. English, and will likely be blocked in countries with strict AI regulations, like China. Plus, many of the features Apple announced in June won’t be ready on Day 1. Instead, they’ll be introduced in phases over the coming months.

Because of Apple’s measured rollout strategy, even the most bullish analysts expect it to take years for the company to get its AI into the hands of the 1 billion or so iPhone users.

Do consumers want AI gadgets?

Apple typically adds modest enhancements to its iPhones each year. The camera gets a little better. The processors are faster. The battery life improves. None of that is compelling enough to get consumers to rush to upgrade every year or two as they did in the earlier days of the iPhone when big hardware innovations were standard. You can expect the same kind of iterative hardware improvements for this year’s phones.

That puts more pressure on Apple Intelligence to deliver. But consumer appetite is a question mark.

Results from a recent survey by research firm Canalys showed just 7% of consumers had a “very high inclination” to make a purchasing decision because of AI. Interest is significantly higher in Apple’s two most lucrative markets, the U.S. and China, but there’s a giant disparity between them.

In the U.S., 15% of respondents said they had a high or very high inclination to buy gadgets because of AI. In China, where consumers tend to care more about tech specs, that number was 43%. The relatively muted interested, especially in the U.S., suggests that Apple will need its marketing machine to tell a compelling story around what AI can do for the typical iPhone user.

“There are lots of interesting features, but you have to bring those to the normal user in situations they can use repeatedly, not just a one-time feature,” said Gerrit Schneemann, an analyst at Counterpoint Technology. “It’s hard to tell that story in a store with a poster or a two-second sales pitch.”

Apple CEO Tim Cook speaks during Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference in Cupertino, California, on June 10, 2024.

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Apple Intelligence will use the personal data stored on your phone and help supercharge Siri into a more capable assistant. Plus, app developers will be able tap into Apple intelligence, so you can use it everywhere on your phone. Schneemann said that’s a fresh take on AI compared with Google or Samsung.

“There is the potential to help speed up that educational curve and permeate into the market,” he said.

Samsung’s Galaxy S24, its latest flagship device, has sold better than last year’s model. But there’s little evidence that AI is the primary driver, IDC’s Popal said. Apple is in another category.

“The psyche for premium Apple customers is different,” Popal said, adding that many iPhone customers buy their phones using financing plans, which make it easier to upgrade.

More recently, Google launched its Pixel 9 series of phones, which has the company’s digital AI assistant, Gemini, built directly into the software. Google’s smartphones have never been major sellers, but they often show what’s possible on Android phones before those features make their way to Samsung or Motorola devices.

The marquee feature on the Pixel is a version of Gemini that can carry out natural conversations instead of responding to one command at a time, a capability other Android phones with Gemini should get in the future.

While the reviews for the Pixel 9 were positive, it’s still too early to tell if AI can finally juice sales.

In the PC market, Microsoft’s Copilot+ PCs launched this summer, but without their marquee AI feature, Recall. (Microsoft learned the hard way it’s not a good idea to launch a product that takes screenshots of everything you do on your computer every few seconds.) Recall will hit this market later this fall for a limited number of early testers.

Without Recall, there’s not much AI in this batch of AI PCs.

The real benefit for now seems to be the power and performance from the new PC chips from Qualcomm that debuted in Copilot+ PCs. The processors are based on the same technology as your phone chip, meaning they’re still plenty powerful without using up the battery.

“This is the transition of the traditional PC, turning it to look like a mobile device,” said Alex Katouzian, Qualcomm’s general manager for mobile and wearable technology. He said Microsoft is working on more AI features and fixing the privacy issues with Recall.

Microsoft said it expects 50 million Copilot+ PCs to ship this year, which would represent about 1 in 5 PCs expected to be sold. Katouzian said Qualcomm-powered Copilot PCs are “on track” so far.

Still, Copilot PCs made up “a relatively small percentage” of PC sales at Best Buy this summer, CEO Corie Barry said on the company’s most recent earnings call. She added that customers “just want to replace and upgrade” without necessarily looking for a device with AI or spending a premium for it.

Apple’s AI rollout

If Apple can buck the trend and successfully wow its customers with Apple Intelligence, the next step will be rolling it out globally to drive iPhone sales in markets outside the U.S.

There are other roadblocks in its way.

China, where Apple generates nearly a fifth of its sales, requires government approval before an AI model can launch in the country. Apple CEO Tim Cook told CNBC in August his team is working with regulators in China to make that happen.

Then there’s the EU, which has passed a slew of stringent laws regulating the world’s largest technology companies. Apple said this summer it won’t launch Apple Intelligence right away in the EU because of those regulations.

In the meantime, Apple Intelligence users will be members of a relatively exclusive club. Apple’s job is to convince customers to pay up for a new device and join.

“We’re very excited about the value that Apple Intelligence gives to users,” Cook told CNBC in August. “For that reason, we think it’s another compelling reason to upgrade … we’ll see how the season goes once we start shipping, but we’re very excited about it.”

Correction: Humane’s AI pin launched in April. An earlier version misstated the month,

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Nintendo’s Switch 2 has powered a $39 billion rally this year

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Nintendo's Switch 2 has powered a  billion rally this year

Nintendo Co. Switch 2 game consoles at a Bic Camera Inc. electronics store in Tokyo, Japan, on Thursday, June 5, 2025. Nintendo Co. fans from Tokyo to Manhattan stood in line for hours to be among the first to get a Switch 2, fueling one of the biggest global gadget debuts since the iPhone launches of yesteryear.

Kiyoshi Ota | Bloomberg | Getty Images

Nintendo shares hit a fresh record high on Wednesday, continuing this year’s massive rally that has been fueled by hype around the company’s newly released Switch 2 console.

Shares of the Japanese gaming giant have jumped 46% this year, adding roughly $39 billion to the stock’s value, according to a CNBC calculation of data from S&P Capital IQ.

The Switch 2 is the successor of the original Switch console, which was released in 2017. Nintendo unveiled details of the Switch 2 in January, and the device went on sale this month, leading to shortages of the console in some markets and even to stores operating special opening hours.

Nintendo this month said it sold 3.5 million units of the Switch 2 in the four days following its launch. The company has previously forecast sales of 15 million units in its fiscal year ending March 2026, though many analysts say that is a modest estimate and expect Nintendo to achieve higher numbers.

Nintendo’s original Switch is its second-most successful console in history, selling over 152 million units since its launch to the quarter ended March this year. Its appeal lies in its hybrid nature — users can play the console on a TV, but can also detach it to use it on the go.

Investors are hoping the Switch 2 will replicate the success of its predecessor.

Nintendo has boosted the the success of its consoles through games involving strong franchises with characters and brands like Super Mario, Zelda and Pokemon. And the company has used its recognizable intellectual property and licensed it to movies and theme parks, boosting the success of its core video game product.

For Nintendo investors, that strategy has paid off. Since March 2017, when the original Switch was released, Nintendo shares have surged nearly 470%, according to S&P Capital IQ data. More than $81 billion has been added to the company’s market capitalization over that period.

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Sam Altman says Meta offered OpenAI staff $100 million bonuses, as Mark Zuckerberg ramps up AI poaching efforts

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Sam Altman says Meta offered OpenAI staff 0 million bonuses, as Mark Zuckerberg ramps up AI poaching efforts

OpenAI CEO Sam Altman speaks during the Snowflake Summit in San Francisco on June 2, 2025.

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Meta Platforms tried to poach OpenAI employees by offering signing bonuses as high as $100 million, with even larger annual compensation packages, OpenAI chief executive Sam Altman said.

While Meta had sought to hire “a lot of people” from OpenAI, “so far none of our best people have decided to take them up on that,” Altman said, speaking on the “Uncapped” podcast, which is hosted by his brother.

“I’ve heard that Meta thinks of us as their biggest competitor,” he said. “Their current AI efforts have not worked as well as they have hoped and I respect being aggressive and continuing to try new things.”

Meta did not immediately respond to a request for comment from CNBC.

The Meta CEO is personally trying to assemble a top artificial intelligence team for its “superintelligence” AI lab and has invested heavily in AI through its Meta AI research division, which also oversees its Llama series of open-source large language models.

The moves come after Meta had once again delayed the release of its latest flagship AI model due to concerns about its capabilities, according to a report from the Wall Street Journal.

Meanwhile, sources have previously told CNBC that Zuckerberg has become so frustrated with Meta’s standing in AI that he’s willing to invest billions in top talent. 

Last week Alexandr Wang, founder of Scale AI, announced he was leaving for Meta as part of a deal that saw the Facebook parent dish out $14.3 billion for a 49% stake in the AI startup. Wang added that a small number of Scale AI employees would also join Meta as part of the agreement. 

What Meta's Scale AI deal reveals about the battle for top AI talent

The Times had previously reported that Wang would head a research lab pursuing “superintelligence,” an AI system that surpasses human intelligence.

The company has also recently poached other top talent, including Jack Rae, a principal researcher at Google’s AI research laboratory DeepMind, according to a report from Bloomberg. The report added that Zuckerberg had been directly involved with the recruitment efforts. 

Speaking on the podcast, which was released on Tuesday, Altman said that Meta’s strategy of offering a large, upfront, guaranteed compensation would detract from the actual work and not set up a winning culture.

“I think that there’s a lot of people, and Meta will be a new one, that are saying ‘we’re just going to try to copy OpenAI,'” he added. “That basically never works. You’re always going to where your competitor was, and you don’t build up a culture of learning what it’s like to innovate.”

However, spending big on startups and their talent is nothing new to the AI space. Former Apple chief design officer Jony Ive joined OpenAI after the company acquired Ive’s AI devices startup io through a $6.4 billion all-equity deal last month.

Some tech analysts have also pushed back against the notion that Meta has been missing the mark on AI.

“They basically built the rails for open source AI development, and so much of what is happening in AI is being built on Meta,” Daniel Newman, CEO at Futurum Group, told CNBC’s “Power Lunch” last week. 

Open-source generally refers to software in which the source code is made freely available on the web for possible modification and redistribution. Llama’s open-source characteristics have allowed many third-party applications to be built on top of it.  

Newman added that Meta’s massive investments, such as in ScaleAI, will continue to push it forward in training its behemoth models.

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Trump to extend TikTok deadline for third time, pushing decision out another 90 days

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Trump to extend TikTok deadline for third time, pushing decision out another 90 days

Muhammed Selim Korkutata | Anadolu | Getty Images

For a third time since taking office in January, President Donald Trump plans to extend a deadline that would require China’s ByteDance to divest TikTok’s U.S. business.

“President Trump will sign an additional Executive Order this week to keep TikTok up and running,” White House Press Secretary Karoline Leavitt said in a statement. “As he has said many times, President Trump does not want TikTok to go dark. This extension will last 90 days, which the Administration will spend working to ensure this deal is closed so that the American people can continue to use TikTok with the assurance that their data is safe and secure.”

ByteDance was nearing the deadline of June 19, to sell TikTok’s U.S. operations in order to satisfy a national security law that the Supreme Court upheld just a few days before Trump’s second presidential inauguration. Under the law, app store operators like Apple and Google and internet service providers would be penalized for supporting TikTok.

ByteDance originally faced a Jan. 19 deadline to comply with the national security law, but Trump signed an executive order when he first took office that pushed the deadline to April 5. Trump extended the deadline for the second time a day before that April mark.

Trump told NBC News in May that he would extend the TikTok deadline again if no deal was reached, and he reiterated his plans on Thursday.

Prior to Trump signing the first executive order, TikTok briefly went offline in the U.S. for a day, only to return after the president’s announcement. Apple and Google also removed TikTok from the Apple App Store and Google Play during TikTok’s initial U.S. shut down, but then reinstated the app to their respective app stores in February.

Multiple parties including Oracle, AppLovin, and Billionaire Frank McCourt’s Project Liberty consortium have expressed interest in buying TikTok’s U.S. operations. It’s unclear whether the Chinese government would approve a deal.

— CNBC’s Kevin Breuninger contributed to this report

WATCH: Project Liberty’s bid for TikTok is aligned with U.S. national security priorities.

Frank McCourt: Project Liberty's bid for TikTok is aligned with U.S. national security priorities

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