“…Positive For Shares” Apple Stock (NASDAQ:AAPL) Notches Up as Bank of America Likes AI Possibilities

One point that has dogged at the heels of consumer electronics giant Apple (AAPL) is its lack of presence in artificial intelligence (AI). But this may be about to change, and Bank of America analysts are welcoming that change. Investors seem to be welcoming it too, albeit cautiously, and Apple shares are up fractionally in Tuesday afternoon’s trading. .

Bank of America analyst Wamsi Mohan—who has a five-star rating on TipRanks—noted that an AI acquisition would settle a lot of issues at Apple. With Apple’s AI up on blocks right now—Siri integration has been “delayed,” Mohan noted, and “…no cutting edge models” are set to follow—an acquisition in the AI space would settle perhaps Apple’s biggest problem. In fact, Mohan noted, “Any such deal (we do not have any direct knowledge of the probability of such a deal) would likely be positive for shares that are currently in the penalty box…”

Mohan further noted, “Perplexity AI could address some of key issues including quick access to a voice assistant (better than Siri) and could be a hedge to the risk of having Google as a default search engine.” This actually came at a surprisingly prescient time for Mohan; reports emerged just yesterday about a potential deal with Perplexity.

Fixing Some Smaller Problems First

But there was other good news for Apple too, as user complains about Liquid Glass and the Control Center also got addressed recently. Apparently, Liquid Glass made the Control Center difficult to use in some cases, because the image displayed to interact with it became “…nearly unreadable…” But the newest beta addressed that issue with a positive change, making the Control Center readouts much more easily read.

There are still some issues, reports note, particularly with color bleed. However, the biggest issues appear to be settled, and that represents good news enough for Apple device users. And Apple needs all the good news it can get for those device users, who might be planning to jump ship thanks to the AI lag that Apple is experiencing right now.

Is Apple a Buy, Hold or Sell?

Turning to Wall Street, analysts have a Moderate Buy consensus rating on AAPL stock based on 16 Buys, nine Holds and four Sells assigned in the past three months, as indicated by the graphic below. After a 3.62% loss in its share price over the past year, the average AAPL price target of $226.94 per share implies 12.17% upside potential.

See more AAPL analyst ratings

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