What Could Still Send Apple Stock Higher? Trefis Team Fri, November 13, 2026 at 11:25 AM EST 3 min read AAPL +0.74% MSFT -0.20% GOOG -1.54% AMZN -1.14% DELL -9.24% Explore stocks on Coinbase Trading disclosure Trading disclosure The above button links to Coinbase. Yahoo Finance is not a broker-dealer or investment adviser and does not offer securities or cryptocurrencies for sale or facilitate trading. Coinbase pays us for certain activity generated through this link. Prices displayed are informational.
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Apple (AAPL) just finished its best fiscal year yet. On its November 2, 2026 earnings call, management said revenue reached $478.8 billion, up 15%. Growth at a company of Apple's size raises the question of what keeps it growing, and management pointed to one answer on that call: giving the owners of more than 2.5 billion active Apple devices a new reason to buy again. So what is Apple offering them?
Apple Wants Siri AI To Sell New iPhones
Apple's offer is Siri AI, a new AI version of its Siri assistant. The company launched it in beta for U.S. English users in September and expanded it to French, Japanese, Korean, Portuguese and Spanish in October. Management said on the call that AI offers a compelling reason for customers to upgrade and switch, and that the server-side features of Siri AI open opportunities for Apple's own offerings too.
Upgrades, the measure Siri AI is meant to lift, were already strong. Apple set a September quarter record for upgraders worldwide, and iPhone revenue reached $57.6 billion in that quarter, up 17% from a year earlier. Apple also raised iPhone prices in September, so that revenue mixes higher prices with demand, and the upgrader record looks like the cleaner sign. Siri AI is still in beta and launched only in September, so the record says little about Siri AI yet.
How Big Is Apple's iPhone Business?
The iPhone brought in $254 billion in fiscal 2026, or 53.1% of company revenue, so it is more than half of Apple. That was up from $210 billion a year earlier, so the iPhone alone added $44 billion of sales in one year. The Mac, which management said more companies are choosing for on-device AI, is far smaller at $37.9 billion, or 7.9% of revenue, so an AI lift there would add to the iPhone rather than match it.
Buyers have already paid up for that growth. Apple stock returned 29.4% over the twelve months to November 12, 2026, against 12.2% for the S&P 500. The stock closed that day just 0.1% below its highest close of the past year. Trading at 39.1 times earnings, against 21.9 for the S&P 500, the price appears to assume iPhone sales will keep growing after fiscal 2026.
What Could Hold Back Apple's Growth?
Higher memory costs are the first headwind. Management guided for a gross margin of 45% to 46% in the December quarter, down from the 47.9% reported for the September quarter. That September figure included about 1 percentage point of benefit from tariff refunds. Executives said the new guidance mainly reflects higher memory costs, along with some expenses from the Siri AI ramp.
Memory also limits supply. Management expects memory to constrain Mac and iPad supply in the December quarter, as demand has been higher than it expected. A longer-run question came up on the call as well: whether, as personal AI agents become more prominent, the main customer relationship could shift from the device to the agent. CEO John Ternus answered that Apple sees the iPhone as the intelligent personal hub, because it holds users' personal data that Siri can tap into privately.
For now, management expects December quarter revenue to grow 7% to 10% from a year earlier, and projects the period will be the best for revenue in Apple's history. Apple is counting on Siri AI to bring buyers back. December quarter iPhone revenue, which the company is expected to report in January 2027, is the number to watch.
Does This Mean You Should Act On AAPL?
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