Apple celebrates its 50th anniversary on April 1, a milestone that would once have seemed improbable for a company that came within weeks of bankruptcy in the late 1990s before Steve Jobs rebuilt it around design, simplicity, and vertical control of its entire technology stack. Today it is the world's largest public company by market capitalisation, with 1.5 billion iPhones and 2.5 billion iOS devices in circulation globally.
The anniversary, however, is not what investors are focused on. According to a research note published today by Wedbush Securities, the event that matters comes in June.
WWDC and the Siri question
Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference is shaping up as one of the most consequential in the company's recent history. Last year's edition disappointed: a visual design refresh under the "Liquid Glass" banner arrived without the AI update the market had been anticipating, and Apple pushed its flagship AI release back without a firm rescheduled date.
June's conference is expected to be different, according to Wedbush analysts led by Dan Ives. The firm expects Apple to present a fully articulated AI strategy, centred on a substantially upgraded Siri. The new assistant is expected to integrate Google's Gemini as its underlying foundation model, delivering improved personal context and on-screen awareness. Apple is also expected to announce new developer tools designed to simplify AI integration into third-party apps, with on-device processing and privacy protections central to the pitch.
Wedbush goes further, forecasting that Apple will launch a paid AI subscription service by 2027, adding a new recurring revenue line to a services business that already generates significant margins.
A significant hardware year
The AI announcements at WWDC will land against a busy product backdrop. Apple has already released new hardware earlier this year with greater processing performance and expanded memory capacity, positioning its devices to handle more demanding AI workloads locally. Supply chain checks cited by Wedbush suggest the company is in the later stages of developing a foldable iPhone, expected to launch alongside the standard iPhone 18 in September. A touchscreen MacBook is also reported to be in development.
The foldable, if it arrives on schedule, would mark Apple's entry into a category that Samsung has occupied largely alone among premium manufacturers. It would also provide an additional catalyst for hardware revenue at a time when the core iPhone upgrade cycle needs fresh stimulus.
What the numbers say
Wedbush maintains an Outperform rating on Apple with a $350 price target, against a current share price of $252.89. The firm's revenue estimates put Apple on track for approximately $461 billion in sales for the fiscal year ending September 2026, rising to $481 billion the year after. Earnings per share are forecast at $8.50 this year and $9.27 in 2027.
The risks the firm identifies are familiar: iPhone cycle execution, services penetration of the installed base, and China, where lower-priced domestic competitors and ongoing tariff uncertainty represent a structural drag on Apple's most important growth market outside the United States.
The bull case rests on the consumer AI cycle playing out through Apple's hardware and services ecosystem. With 2.5 billion active devices already in the field, the distribution advantage is structural. The question is whether the software catches up at WWDC.