From the hot sales of iPhone 17 to the "AI inference super blue ocean," Apple quietly steps into a new round of bull market trajectory

According to the Zhitong Finance APP, Wall Street financial giant Bank of America stated on Monday that the delivery cycle for Apple Inc.'s (AAPL.US) newly released iPhone 17 smartphone series is still significantly higher than last year's iPhone models, and provided the latest update on delivery data from last week. Bank of America's latest research report undoubtedly highlights that although the newly released iPhone 17 has been criticized by some users for lacking highlights after the launch event, actual demand is very strong driven by comprehensive upgrades in AI features and key performance, with the standard version and Pro Max model showing the strongest demand—this largely indicates that Apple users who have not upgraded their devices for 4-5 years are starting to switch to the iPhone 17.

In addition, the logic behind Apple's recent strong upward trajectory in stock price is that the market is beginning to price in Apple as a "super winner in the AI inference era." A recent research report from the well-known Wall Street investment firm Bernstein shows that the enormous AI inference systems expected to emerge by 2030 will bring a trillion-dollar "super blue ocean," which should provide long-term benefits for large tech companies focused on IT hardware and consumer electronics, such as consumer electronics giant Apple.

Since September, Apple's stock price, which had performed weakly for most of the year, has rebounded strongly by over 10%. With strong demand for the iPhone 17 and the market beginning to price in Apple's benefits from the trillion-dollar "artificial intelligence inference super blue ocean," Wall Street's bullish sentiment towards Apple is also growing. Recent Wall Street analysts covering Apple are generally optimistic about Apple's stock price hitting the $300 mark. As of Monday's market close, Apple's stock price was $254.430, with a market capitalization stable at $3.8 trillion, second only to Nvidia and Microsoft.

iPhone 17 Series Delivery Cycle Still Significantly Higher Than Last Year

Delivery times significantly longer than last year are generally interpreted as the most important signal of "demand > supply," which is a bullish catalyst for short-term sales expectations.

Bank of America analyst Wamsi Mohan wrote in a recent report to clients that as of September 29, the overall statistics from Apple's official website and various partner carrier websites show that the delivery time for the iPhone 17 is approximately 19 days. "Compared to the 5-day initial delivery cycle of the previous generation iPhone—the iPhone 16 series, this indicates very strong upgrade demand for the iPhone 17 series." said Bank of America analyst Mohan.

The report from Bank of America further indicates that the delivery date for the standard iPhone 17 in the Chinese market is the longest at 25 days, while other international regions are approximately 18 days overall, highlighting the strong demand for the standard version. Additionally, from a global perspective, the overall delivery cycle for the more expensive iPhone 17 Pro model and iPhone 17 Pro Max is basically similar to last year, but the delivery time for the Pro Max model is slightly higher than last year, while the Pro model remains the same as last year According to channel data compiled by Bank of America, the delivery time for the iPhone 17 Pro is 14 days, while the delivery time for the iPhone 17 Max is as long as 21 days. Bank of America added that the availability from U.S. carriers seems to be better than Apple's direct delivery channels: when purchased directly from Apple's platforms, the delivery cycle for Pro models is between two to three weeks, while the delivery cycle from U.S. carriers is only about 9 days.

Bank of America analyst Mohan stated that in the Chinese market, due to government subsidies for consumer electronics priced below 6,000 RMB, and the supply shortage of the iPhone Air due to eSIM factors, the iPhone 17 standard series may sell very well in China.

However, Mohan noted that channel data shows the iPhone Air has "ample supply" globally and demand is not inferior to that of the iPhone 17 standard model, with a global average shipping date of only three days. "The shorter official shipping time for the Air may indicate higher initial inventory, as Apple likely anticipated strong demand for the iPhone Air," analyst Mohan speculated.

AI Inference Dominates the Trillion-Dollar Blue Ocean

Undoubtedly, the recently announced contract reserve of $455 billion by global cloud computing giant Oracle, which far exceeded market expectations, along with the strong performance and future outlook announced by global AI ASIC chip "superpower" Broadcom in early September, have significantly reinforced the "long-term bull market narrative" for AI GPU, ASIC, and HBM infrastructure segments.

The demand for AI computing power driven by generative AI application software and highly intelligent AI agents at the inference end is described as "starry sea," and is expected to drive the AI computing power infrastructure market to continue showing exponential growth. The "AI inference system" is also considered by Jensen Huang to be the largest source of future revenue for NVIDIA. NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang even predicted that by 2030, AI infrastructure spending will reach $3 trillion to $4 trillion, and the scale and scope of its projects will bring significant long-term growth opportunities for NVIDIA.

"Although there are still short-term concerns about an AI bubble in the market, we believe that IT hardware and consumer electronics still have significant upside potential in the long term," wrote the analyst team from Bernstein. "While there is a huge uncertainty range in the results, in our 2030 baseline forecast scenario, we conservatively set the enterprise-side inference cost scale at about $1.3 trillion (implying an expected compound annual growth rate of about 67% during the 2025-2030 period)."

"We believe that continuous improvement and iterative updates of models are key leading indicators, and we remind that large-scale capital expenditures may be a lagging indicator. In addition to maintaining a positive outlook on the long-term prospects, we also believe that recent early signs of the booming development of artificial intelligence remain healthy, and overall we still hold a positive view on this theme," the Bernstein analyst team stated.

As for Apple, the institution stated that this technology giant, which boasts consumer electronics product lines such as the iPhone and iPad, is "one of the best entry points for the artificial intelligence inference revolution." Bernstein's analyst team believes that under the leadership of Tim Cook, this tech giant has the most optimal artificial intelligence layout in the sector and is one of the most likely to benefit.

According to statistics, the active devices in the Apple ecosystem have reached 2.35 billion, which means that once reasoning capabilities are integrated at the system level, developers can "plug and play" to reach a vast number of end users. This is the core AI engineering advantage of Apple's edge devices as the "artificial intelligence entry point." Apple's AI application tool—Apple Intelligence is designed by Apple to prioritize local operation, only calling larger-scale cloud AI models through Private Cloud Compute (PCC) when necessary, and moving Apple's endpoint security model "to the cloud," providing verifiable transparency and minimal data residency, which is highly attractive for building sensitive scenarios (personal and enterprise data).

Apple CEO Tim Cook recently defended the enduring strong influence of the iPhone, stating that even with complementary intelligent electronic devices, the iPhone will remain the core of people's lives in the upcoming fully opened artificial intelligence era.