Evercore ISI has held firm on an Outperform recommendation for Apple Inc. and left its price target at $330.00, a level the firm calculates implies roughly 20% upside from the stock's recent quote of $275.50. Apple has been trading close to a 52-week high of $288.62.
In a research note, Evercore ISI signaled that Apple is likely to miss its previously suggested March timing for the next iteration of Apple Intelligence. The firm attributed the delay to recent testing challenges and expects the company to shift toward a staged deployment of its new artificial intelligence capabilities over the course of the year.
According to the analyst note, Apple Intelligence 2.0 will not arrive all at once. Some new or upgraded features could begin to roll out by mid-year, while other elements are likely to follow in subsequent phases. A comprehensive overhaul of Siri is anticipated to be part of the roadmap this fall.
Privacy remains central to Apple’s approach, Evercore ISI said, with the company prioritizing data protection and tight integration before opening its upgraded AI features more broadly.
The outlook comes against a backdrop of healthy recent results for the company. Apple reported revenue and profit figures that exceeded expectations, a performance the research note links to the strength of the iPhone 17 cycle. Management also projected persistence of that momentum into the company’s fiscal second quarter, and guided to gross margins that are expected to tick up slightly to 48.5% at the midpoint.
Market analysts have reacted to the combination of operational strength and product transition news. Bernstein SocGen raised its price target on Apple to $340 from $325 and maintained an Outperform rating.
Separate strategic and platform developments were also highlighted. Apple and Google made public commitments to increase fairness and transparency in their app stores following requests from the UK regulator. Apple is planning to extend CarPlay to support third-party AI voice applications, enabling integration with chatbots such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT. On the developer side, Apple’s Xcode 26.3 now includes support for Anthropic’s Claude Agent SDK.
Not all signals are unambiguously positive. Analyst Ming-Chi Kuo at TF International Securities pointed to pressure on memory costs and constraints in the supply chain, factors that could affect components and production dynamics as Apple scales new features and devices.
Taken together, the various updates - from delayed AI feature timing to stronger device sales and evolving platform openness - underscore Apple’s ongoing effort to balance product rollout, privacy controls, and supply-side realities as it brings new AI functionality to users.
Context note: The information above reflects the contents of recent analyst reports and company disclosures as described in the corresponding research notes and market commentary.