In his inaugural keynote as Apple CEO, John Ternus emphasized the iPhone’s central role in the company’s strategy for the AI era, asserting that “there’s no product in the world better designed to be your intelligent personal hub than iPhone.” This stance contrasts with former CEO Tim Cook’s efforts to portray Apple as more than just an iPhone company and directly counters recent punditry suggesting the smartphone’s decline. Ternus’s approach mirrors a strategy employed by Steve Jobs in 2001, when he positioned the Mac as a “digital hub” amidst predictions of the PC’s obsolescence, a move that later paved the way for the iPod’s development.
Ternus envisions the iPhone as the core of an “intelligent personal assistant” strategy, highlighting its powerful processor, high-resolution cameras, persistent networking, and on-device AI capabilities. He argues that the iPhone’s combination of computational power and portability grants Apple a privileged position in the AI landscape, a status that competing wearable devices have so far failed to challenge. By doubling down on the iPhone rather than seeking to replace it, Ternus is effectively reaffirming the device’s enduring value and relevance in the current technological context. Source