JAKARTA Apple is facing a series of unprecedented technical and regulatory challenges ahead of the Worldwide Developers Conference (WWDC) annual event which will be held on Monday, June 9, where key company executives are scheduled to appear.
From a technical point of view, Apple's promised a number of artificial intelligence (AI) features in the same conference last year have been delayed until next year. Meanwhile, competitors such as Google (Alphabet) and Microsoft continue to attract developers with various new AI features. One of the delayed features is the main improvement for Siri's digital assistants.
From the regulatory side, Apple is facing pressure from courts in the US and Europe that is likely to erode dominance and huge profits from its App Store. Even some former Apple supporters began to question whether Apple's costs to developers could still be justified.
The issue comes at the same time as the threat of US President Donald Trump, who plans to charge a rate of 25% against the iPhone, Apple's best-selling product. Apple's stock has fallen more than 40% since the start of the year a sharper decline than Google, and lags far behind Microsoft's share gains driven by AI.
Although Apple has launched some of the promised AI features, including image writing and creation tools, some of its technologies still rely on partners like OpenAI, creators of ChatGPT. Bloomberg reports that Apple may be opening its internal AI models to developers this year.
However, analysts haven't seen Apple have a "multi-modal" AI model, which is a technology that is able to understand images, sounds and languages simultaneously which is an important basis in the development of smart glasses. Meanwhile, the smart glasses market is now being controlled by Meta Platforms and Google. Last month, Google announced it would return to this market with a number of partners.
Unlike Apple's Vision Pro headset which is priced at $3,500, smart glasses from Meta and Google are much lighter and cheaper. Meta, for example, sells Ray-Ban smart glasses at a price of under 400 US dollars (ERP6.5 million).
Ben Bajarin analyst CEO of Creative Strategies said that Apple was not ready to answer this challenge. "I'm not trying to replace my phone this is a complementary device that gives me a wider world context, because I have a camera and can understand natural languages," he said.
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However, the dominance of Meta and Google in this market is not entirely certain. Analyst Anshel Sag of Moor Insights & Strategy assessed that Meta's Ray-Ban smart glasses still lack some important features, and Google has not succeeded in bringing its "Gemini" model to the mass market.
"Meta is still leading, but Google is fast following and has the most suitable AI for this need," said Sag. "Vision Pro is good, but it is more suitable to be a display product and a trial tool for developers."
TECHnalysis Research CEO Bob O'Donnell added that there is no strong evidence that consumers really use the AI feature as a major factor in buying hardware. He also assessed that Apple is not necessarily disadvantaged if it chooses to partner with companies like Google, OpenAI, or even startups like Perplexity in terms of AI technology.
"There is still an argument that it's okay for Apple to be a little left behind, because except among the most enthusiastic users, most people don't really care," O'Donnell said.
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