Apple has lost the AI ​​race, and now the real challenge begins

For a loser in the AI ​​space, Apple had a lot of wins last year.

Sure, the mess Apple Intelligence created was embarrassing, but through it all, the company has continued to do what it does best: sell iPhones. With this week’s news that The Gemini models will be used to power the long-awaited, smarter SiriApple seems to have achieved great success in the whole AI race. But there is still a big challenge ahead, and Apple is not out of the race yet.

Apple Intelligence got off to a well-documented rocky start in 2024. The iPhone 16 was designed specifically for Apple Intelligence, but shipped without it. The features arrived over the next few months, but the so-called Smarter Siri Never materialized. Apple executives admitted they went back to the drawing board, the people in charge were swapped out, and it all looked like a major failure on Apple’s part.

But it doesn’t quite seem like people are willing to give up their iPhones for Google’s Gemini-infused Android phones. according to IDC report for the third quarter of 2025“Demand for Apple’s new iPhone 17 lineup has been strong, with pre-orders exceeding those of the previous generation.” Counterpoint Research calls Apple the ‘market leader’ for smartphones globally in 2025 10 percent growth in market share year-on-year. Meanwhile, Apple Intelligence is less prominent in the iPhone 17’s marketing than it was with the iPhone 16; you have to Scroll halfway down the iPhone 17 product page Before you reach the first signal.

The procrastination tactic worked, but these days investors get nervous if you don’t mention AI every five minutes. Apple had to figure this out Something On the way to the strategy, and in the second half of 2025, we’re starting to hear reports of that You may be looking for external partnersInstead of building their own models from scratch. It wouldn’t be entirely unprecedented; Apple already allows users to access ChatGPT directly in iOS and has done so I promised from the beginning They will add more third-party LLMs this way. But this week’s deal isn’t about adding a quick way to chat with Gemini on iPhone. You can actually do that in the Gemini app. It’s about building a smarter Siri on Google Forms and running it entirely in Apple’s private cloud. If and when a smarter Siri arrives this year, he’ll have some serious Gemini DNA.

You could say Apple made the right decision from a business standpoint, but was it right? apple Move? It is considered Tim Cook’s own words on a 2009 earnings call: “We believe that we need to own and control the core technologies behind the products we make…” This was the basis on which the company sought to develop its own silicon, which was undoubtedly a winning strategy. But either Apple believes that AI models aren’t core technology at all — it’s more like a core service that it will build products on top of — or it made a serious mistake in judging AI as the next platform shift and risks being left behind. Low risk stuff!

To be sure, Apple doesn’t control the fate of every part of the iPhone. It hasn’t built its own search engine, wireless network, or algorithmic social media platform. All of these things work on the iPhone, but they’re not core parts of the iPhone’s identity, and AI could end up the same way. Perhaps there’s a hint in the way Apple has shifted from encouraging developers to encouraging developers Adopt its application intent framework to Using human-developed MCP as the basis for proxy features. If AI only needed to find the right connections to get things done, the specific models it worked on would be less important. But it all depends on the product Apple builds around AI, which starts with Siri.

That’s the real challenge facing Apple: turning Apple Intelligence into a product people actually want, not one they’re indifferent to. It needs to turn Siri into the thing the company promised all along, not a timer machine. Apple can make a beautiful product – no doubt. Can she do it without controlling her own models? Can she do it faster than Google, Jony Ive or any other competitor ready to run the park’s walls? The deal may have been signed, but the real work begins now.