Apple · CNBC Technology
Apple at 50: The iPhone maker 'blew a 5-year lead' on AI, but former insiders say it can still win
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CUPERTINO, Calif. — Nasdaq brought its market open festivities to Apple's sprawling Silicon Valley headquarters on Tuesday, the eve of the company's 50th birthday.
Key facts
- Money isn't the main issue — Apple recorded net cash of $54 billion in the latest quarter and returned $32 billion to shareholders, mostly through buybacks
- That's an amazingly big ask and amazingly big vision," said John Sculley, who was Apple's CEO from 1983 to 1993, in an interview
- Ken Kocienda, who spent 15 years at Apple and invented keyboard autocorrect for the original iPhone, left in 2017 and joined AI hardware startup Humane a few years later
- Last year, OpenAI bought Jony Ive's design firm, io, for $6.4 billion and charged the former Apple design chief with building something as consequential for the AI era as the iPhone was for the move
Summary
From a desk inside Apple Park, the ring-shaped campus that Steve Jobs spent his last years helping design, Tim Cook rang the opening bell and, in the process, ushered in the iPhone maker's second half-century. It was a celebratory occasion, but one arriving at a pivotal point for an iconic American company that faces major challenges today and in the years ahead as the technology industry gets swept up by artificial intelligence. Before the AI boom, which started with the launch of OpenAI's ChatGPT in late 2022, Apple could win by dominating the consumer device market and adding its Siri voice assistant across its product portfolio. The pitch has always been simple: Pay a premium for a device, and trust that what happens on it stays yours, whether it's messages, photos or notes.