Apple's AI Setback: Falling Behind Ahead of WWDC 2025

Apple’s AI Struggles Before WWDC 2025

Apple is heading into its developer conference burdened by unmet promises, postponed features, and AI models that lag far behind competitors. This has led to concerns that AI-focused users may abandon iPhones, viewing them as outdated in an increasingly AI-driven world.

Signs of Disappointment

According to Bloomberg's Mark Gurman, insiders expect WWDC 2025 to underwhelm. Apple’s much-promised Apple Intelligence features have been unreliable, with news notification summaries disabled after causing misleading headlines. Alarmingly, 73% of Apple Intelligence users report minimal value from these features. Apple's AI models remain limited to around 3 billion parameters, significantly smaller than competitors' models reaching hundreds of billions.

Technical and Infrastructure Challenges

Apple’s on-device AI model, optimized for efficiency, cannot match the raw power of cloud-based models from rivals. Internal testing shows Apple’s server models barely keep pace with GPT-4 Turbo, which itself is being replaced by more advanced systems. The larger 150-billion parameter model Apple claims to have is still in internal testing due to issues with hallucinations.

Despite advanced hardware like the M4 chip’s Neural Engine capable of 38 trillion operations per second, Apple’s computing infrastructure is limited by only 50,000 older GPUs, far fewer than Google and Microsoft’s hundreds of thousands. Years of underinvestment have left Apple at a disadvantage in AI development.

Broken Promises at WWDC

Last year, Apple promised revolutionary AI features such as Swift Assist for AI-powered coding in Xcode, a smarter Siri with personal context awareness, and cross-app voice command workflows. None of these have materialized. Swift Assist has been removed from the roadmap, and Siri’s overhaul has faced significant delays, with some features pushed as far as 2026.

Developers have reacted negatively, losing trust and viewing WWDC more as a preview than a reliable roadmap. Expectations for WWDC 2025 are low, with the biggest AI announcement being opening Foundation Models to third-party developers—but limited to models with just 3 billion parameters.

Strategic Paralysis and Market Impact

While competitors like Microsoft, Google, and Meta invest hundreds of billions in AI infrastructure, Apple rents computing power, limiting its progress. Siri remains far behind other AI assistants, and Apple has no presence in enterprise AI markets, which others dominate with significant revenue.

Investment disparities are stark: Amazon plans $100 billion on AI in 2025, Microsoft $80 billion, Google $75 billion, while Apple’s spending remains unclear. Competitors release major AI updates regularly, whereas Apple’s conversational Siri competitor to ChatGPT is expected only in 2027.

User Loyalty Versus Obsolescence

Historical examples like BlackBerry and Nokia show how quickly loyal users can abandon a brand when technology falls behind. Surveys indicate many iPhone users would switch for better AI features, especially younger and tech-savvy groups. This shift may start slowly but could escalate as users seek AI-first devices at competitive prices.

International markets with weaker ecosystem lock-in are particularly at risk of losing Apple users. Missing the critical 2025 rollout window for Apple Intelligence could lead to irreversible damage by 2026-2027.

The Cost of Playing It Safe

Apple’s focus on privacy and integrated hardware-software experiences has been its strength but now limits its AI progress. Its secretive culture hinders open collaboration crucial for AI advancement, and reliance on rented cloud services leaves it behind competitors controlling their AI infrastructure.

WWDC 2025 is unlikely to reverse Apple’s AI decline. With delayed features, internal challenges, and competitors racing ahead, Apple faces its most significant test in decades. The key question is whether users will wait or move on in an AI-driven future where brand loyalty fades as devices feel obsolete.