Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL) seems poised to capture the "agentic smartphone opportunity," BofA Securities analyst Wamsi Mohan says.

The Apple Analyst: Mohan reiterated a Buy rating and raised the price target from $330 to $380.

The Apple Thesis: In an AI-driven world, the most valuable platform is one that manages "user intent, personal context, app access, permissions, identity, authentication, payments, and trust," Mohan said. Smartphones, he added, are bringing all these together at scale.

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AI assistants are becoming the main way in which people search, use apps, shop, schedule tasks and make payments. In that sense, Apple "should have meaningful leverage over model providers, app developers, merchants, advertisers, and payment networks," he added.

Apple's advantage in agentic AI comes mainly from its chips and iOS ecosystem, the analyst stated. Its chips determine how much AI processing can happen directly on the device, which is important for speed, privacy, reliability, and lower costs, while iOS controls whether AI can access personal context, call apps, route requests, verify identity, ask for permissions, and complete tasks in a trusted way, he noted.

The company's decision to drop its previous "cash-neutral" target signals a new phase of investment to support agentic AI, Mohan said.

Siri As The Execution Layer: Apple needs to evolve Siri into the "orchestration layer of the iPhone," the analyst noted. He highlighted five priorities to achieve this:

  • Make newer iPhones that have significantly better AI capabilities
  • Scale hybrid processing using both on-device models and Private Cloud Compute (PCC)
  • Evolve Siri into an agent that understands intent, retrieves context, calls apps, and completes workflows
  • Make App Intents a broad framework for machine-callable app actions
  • Preserve trust through granular iOS permissions and clear user confirmation

Price Action

Shares of Apple had risen by 0.83% to $311.40 at the time of publication on Tuesday.

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