So my

issue with this is not even Apple per se.

Let's just give Apple credit, right? They're the most...

They protect the most privacy with people.

It's kind of their big advertising feature, right? Oh, you can trust us because we don't do it.

And let's just give them the benefit of the doubt.

Okay, so this is fine.

Were you surprised, Daniel?

Mm-hmm.

But when it comes to AI, government is in cahoots with all these AI companies.

They're using it for their own systems.

They're using it for military, right? So, um, both the people who are creating the AI, the governments that are supposedly in charge all have a vested interest in seeing this technology not only succeed, but them being in control of it, because it's gonna what drive the next power play in, uh, you know, in global politics.

China sees that as well, and so I think that's gonna be the real challenge here, is all those same people that are supposed to be in charge of this and wanna regulate it are also the same people who benefit tremendously from it, whereas your average citizen is sitting there holding the bag, and I think that's really kind of the big issue here.

The analogy to nuclear weapons I think is, you know, apropos here.

It's just that nuclear weapons was a physical thing.

We should say that's good.

Mm-hmm.

But when it comes to AI, government is in cahoots with all these AI companies.

They're using it for their own systems.

They're using it for military, right? So, um, both the people who are creating the AI, the governments that are supposedly in charge all have a vested interest in seeing this technology not only succeed, but them being in control of it because it's gonna what drive the next power play in, uh, you know, in global politics.

China sees that as well, and so I think that's gonna be the real challenge here, is all those same people that are supposed to be in charge of this and wanna regulate it are also the same people who benefit tremendously from it, whereas your average citizen is sitting there holding the bag, and I think that's really kind of the big issue here.

The analogy to nuclear weapons I think is, you know, apropos here.

It's just that nuclear weapons was a physical thing.

We should say that's good.

Mm-hmm.

But when it comes to AI, government is in cahoots with all these AI companies.

They're using it for their own systems.

They're using it for military, right? So, um, both the people who are creating the AI, the governments that are supposedly in charge all have a vested interest in seeing this technology not only succeed, but them being in control of it because it's gonna what drive the next power play in, uh, you know, in global politics.

China sees that as well.

And so I think that's gonna be the real challenge here, is all those same people that are supposed to be in charge of this and wanna regulate it are also the same people who benefit tremendously from it, whereas your average citizen is sitting there holding the bag, and I think that's really kind of the big issue here.

The analogy to nuclear weapons I think is, you know, apropos here.

We should say that's good.

Mm-hmm.

But when it comes to AI, government is in cahoots with all these AI companies.

They're using it for their own systems.

They're using it for military, right? So, um, both the people who are creating the AI, the governments that are supposedly in charge all have a vested interest in seeing this technology not only succeed, but them being in control of it because it's gonna what drive the next power play in, uh, you know, in global politics.

China sees that as well.

And so I think that's gonna be the real challenge here, is all those same people that are supposed to be in charge of this and want to regulate it are also the same people who benefit tremendously from it, whereas your average citizen is sitting there holding the bag.

And I think that's really kind of the big issue here.

We should say that's good.

So does this then spur a new upgrade cycle with the Duo here or do they have more to do still to convince users to upgrade? Because as you mentioned, affordability is a concern here.

Yeah, I think it's going to be, don't get me wrong, this device will sell well.

It'll sell out, but that's also, I think, partly because there's going to be some supply constraints here on making such a complicated device.

But I think it'll take a couple of generations for people to get on board.

You know, it does start at $2,000, which is much higher than what people are used to with phones.

Now, you can make the argument, hey, I'm in the market for a new iPhone, and I usually like having an iPad mini.

you know, you can just get one device now basically and do all that.

It already has it right there.

And so what do we think about the iPhone 18? The 17 certainly received really some good demand we saw that going for a long time we were looking in china the 17 did quite well from what i saw you tell me and now we have the 18 in line is that going to have demand

thanks for having me uh yeah so the 17 did do better than expectations especially since the entire phone market is either flat or declining in some markets especially europe where you know pricing competition is a lot more uh it's rough out there basically especially with the bat tax and you see this in the us as well but the iphone 18 was sorry 17 was received well and when it comes to the iphone 18 well it's not going to be too many major new features for your standard phones.

You're going to get, of course, an improved processor.

Of course, the OS will be better.

The iPhone 18 Pro Max top tier model is rumored to be getting a new camera, which has a physical aperture.

This has been done before by Samsung and some Chinese brands.

It remains to be seen if Apple will stick to it.

So we look a little further out than just this September.

Does it have the potential to help Apple continue to separate itself this year?

Yeah, they're in an interesting spot.

You're absolutely correct.

They don't need to do as much spending.

They don't build out servers.

They're not building out these giant farms for AI.

Instead, they're kinda relying on outsourcing it to Google.

Really quickly, when you think about the balance of the year, what are you, um, paying attention to the m- m- most? Is it enterprise AI adoption? Is it foldable phones? What's on your radar?

What are your thoughts?

Thanks for having me back.

Yeah, so a lot happened.

I would describe this as incremental but strategic if I had to describe the whole event.

So there was a lot of good news here.

They finally delivered on Siri AI.

It's a separate app.

Has it closed the gap enough with this update that we got? Or is that still, does that remain to be seen?

What are you expecting going into this year's annual conference?

Thanks for having me.

Yeah, I got a lot of thoughts on this.

So there is the hype and then there's going to be the reality.

So you're right.

You set this up perfectly that Apple has been talking about AI for a couple of years, but technically they fell behind everyone else as they were focusing on Vision Pro for the last few years, which didn't really work out for them.

So all eyes are on this event.

So why, you know, what's the reason that you can see consumers not being interested in that or that it just probably wouldn't maybe wouldn't have an uptick in demand?

I'm just wondering, you know, how you're tying everything together right now as far as what the market is focused on.

Yeah, so, you know, this is really good news for Apple, at least if it holds.

We are still six months away from the alleged release of this device, and a lot can happen.

My bet is Apple executes on this and that they don't have any issues.

Samsung is the exclusive supplier of this display and has a very long history of making these screens for its own devices.

Now it's going to be doing it for Apple as well.

But this should be a, it's going to bring a lot of attention to Apple, Even though it's rumored to be priced at least $2,000 and maybe even higher than that, meaning very few people will be able to actually afford it, it's going to just draw a lot of attention because when Apple does do things, it tends to execute them extremely well.

I mean, do you think with what it's anticipated to roll out and do this year, it can deliver on that?

Just talk us through how important this product is for Apple.

so this phone i would say is really important because right now the market is starting to collapse a little bit when it comes to smartphone sales so actually apple did a really had a really great quarter last quarter the iphone 17 sold higher than expected but things are trying to come back down to reality right now nand memory uh ram all this is starting to increase apple is absorbing that cost so it's real important that they have this phone uh come out because it does hit a price point which is going to be super important for what is becoming a struggling market for a lot of consumers and for 2026 in general this isn't an apple issue per se everyone is going to be facing this but you know hitting that price point and having a good offering for 5.99 is important it's also would say critical because this is the step ladder for their apple intelligence which is going to be it's out now but the real stuff is supposed to be coming later on this phone has the better hardware for that going forward at a price point for most consumers to kind of get in their foot into the door with it so i would say it's pretty critical for that that said you know there's a lot here to say that people could go buy an iphone 15 pro for slightly less and still kind of get more phone.

So it depends where your market is, what's available to you, because that is an older phone, but that hardware is technically a little bit better than what's being offered today with this new device.

Just talk to us about when do you anticipate we start to see something more meaningful because the markets should be credited with just how patient they have been very much on that.

so the good news here is ai when it comes to the consumer space is still a story of you know what could be right i cover especially ai pcs with windows devices and while they're super cool the consumer market has not responded uh strong super strongly to it and it's still because the argument for this ai and this technology is still a little bit weak on phones it's getting a little bit better So, you know, Apple here, I think actually does have some time and they're lucky because no one has really knocked this out of the park yet with such a must have feature on AI.

Sure.

Okay.

You can edit your photos with AI, but everybody's doing that.

How crucial is AI momentum for this earnings event? And really, what will you be watching to gauge the real-time monetization efforts?

Great.

Thanks for having me.

Yeah.

So when it comes to Microsoft, you know, we're talking about Azure, right? That's their big mover, makes up a huge chunk of their profits.

They've beaten expectations for the last nine events.

So, you know, we're hoping that that's going to happen here.

How do you feel those different approaches are being treated by the street? And do you think that there's merit to both of them?

What is 2026 really about? Is it scale now? Is it monetization or is it consolidation?

Great question.

So there's a lot going on here, right? The issue with AI, I would say right now is there's a lot of parts of it in different apps and, you know, different aspects of our lives, but people haven't been able to sort of kind of connect all the dots yet.

And so what you're going to see is a more personalized AI, what's often referred to as a Gentic AI start to come forward in 2026.

So everybody's familiar with ChatGPT.

It's just a simple bot.

You go in there, you ask questions.

In the next year, as AI really becomes more a part of everyday life, where are daily users, do you think, going to see the biggest impact, including those people who are not actively seeking it out?

Really just want to get your thoughts so far on what you've noticed, trends you've seen from tech earnings that we've already, of course, gotten and parsed through.

Yeah, so it's always a mixed bag when it comes to this.

Obviously, AI is on everyone's mind.

And when it comes to NVIDIA, that is increasingly almost 90% of the revenue comes from AI and servers.

So it's a big deal.

And what everybody's wondering is, is there going to be an AI bubble? I'm not quite convinced there is.

Or rather, I think this is going to disproportionately affect different companies differently.

What do you think that fallout's gonna be?