Apple (AAPL.US) on Tuesday unveiled its latest 14-inch MacBook Pro and an all-new iMac, drawing a positive response from Yorkville analyst Dan Ives, who maintained an "Outperform" rating on the stock with a $400 price target.
"The chip is the real centerpiece here," Ives said in a note to investors. "The M6 upgrade brings a 12-core CPU and 12-core GPU, each adding two more cores over the M5, with every GPU core equipped with a neural network accelerator and dual 16-core neural engines. Apple says it runs up to 1.9 times faster than the M5. But what we are really focused on are the AI-related metrics: on-device large language model prompt processing is up to 25% faster than the M5, time to first token is up to 13 times faster than M1 machines, memory can be configured up to 32GB with 170GB/s of bandwidth, and battery life reaches up to 24 hours — the longest ever for Apple's Mac lineup."
Ives believes Apple is planning to begin monetizing on-device AI usage in the near future.
"First, Apple noted in its footnotes that server-side Apple Intelligence features, including Siri AI, are subject to daily usage limits and that 'expanded access to these features will be available for purchase in the future,'" Ives pointed out. "This is the clearest signal yet that Apple intends to monetize AI directly through its services business rather than relying solely on hardware upgrades — an argument the market has been slow to fully appreciate."
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