On Thursday, Apple Inc. faced two analyst downgrades, signaling growing investor wariness toward the iPhone giant, whose shares have significantly lagged behind other major technology stocks in 2025.
Following these moves, Apple’s consensus recommendation score—a measure reflecting the balance of buy, hold, and sell ratings—fell to 3.9 on a scale of 5, marking its weakest level since early 2020, based on Bloomberg data.
Only 55% of Bloomberg-tracked analysts now rate the stock as a buy, a notably low figure among megacap peers; in contrast, Nvidia Corp., Microsoft Corp., and Amazon.com Inc. all exceed 90% buy ratings.
Ryan Vlastelica for Bloomberg News:
D.A. Davidson cut the stock to neutral from buy, a move that follows product announcements earlier this week that failed to assuage concerns about the company’s position with artificial intelligence.
“While we were initially excited about the prospects of Apple’s role in the AI ecosystem and potential major upgrade cycle, it has become clear to us that neither of those are likely to come to fruition in the near-term,” wrote analyst Gil Luria.
The new products, including a thinner iPhone, “left us uninspired,” he wrote. “Until they can redefine their current products or develop compelling new ones, we believe growth will remain constrained under the status quo.”
That rally is the reason for the second downgrade, to reduce from neutral at Phillip Securities, according to analyst Helena Wang. She added that the firm maintains “a cautious outlook,” in part because it has “no significant AI innovation to help with persistent weakness in products and the China market.”
MacDailyNews Take: Two crap, third-rate, no-name, know-nothing “analysts” trying to gin up some churn. We’ll take whatever the negative sentiment can offer and profit from it.
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[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “Fred Mertz” for the heads up.]
That they have to pine for “compelling new” products shows how weak their case is. Apple is an AI laggard but if anything they’re at the top of their game hardware-wise and bound to release even more in the coming month. Aside from a foldable their product lineup is highly mature and the entry into home robotics is only going to elevate their status. An updated Siri is the special sauce that will bring it all together but we should (!) finally see it in well less than 12 months. They had better not wait to release it with iOS 27…
These analysts are wildly out of touch with real customers. Analysts are lusting over the shiny new toy called AI. According to surveys, actual users are wary about AI and unsure of the benefits.
This is not new. Time and again new Apple products are met with enthusiasm by customers and yawns by analysts.
This reminds me of the release of the iPod mini. The so called pundits panned it. “Too costly, too little storage, too few CODECs”. Actual customers loved it. The size and storage were just right for a real person to use.
This seems to be a consistent problem. Experts marinate in the technology of their field and crave the very best. Actual people just want something that works pretty well. According to the car magazine guys we should all be driving Ferraris or Aston Martins. Real people drive Chevys and Corolla’s to get to work.
MacDailyNews Take: Two crap, third-rate, no-name, know-nothing “analysts” trying to gin up some churn. We’ll take whatever the negative sentiment can offer and profit from it.
The unwavering support for Tim Cooks unimaginative lack of innovative vision boring presentations and failure to engage with reality and move on will be the death nell of the company while he leverages old products for revenue something he has done for years.
His controlling management over the company and product range won’t even let young enthusiastic up coming individuals do the presentations to inject some life enthusiasm and energy and this is a view shared by those older than Tim Cook
Move on Tim
What really matters is whether customers buy Apple products or not. Analysts are just guessing about consumer demand for Apple products. I’m the sort of consumer that holds products for a long time if they work well for me. I’m not constantly looking for something new. A.I. is nice, but I can function well enough without it. I don’t like the idea of A.I. taking away human jobs or the many A.I. data centers that will use up critical energy and water that may be needed by the average consumer.
Apple is being punished for not spending tens of billions of dollars on A.I. and who knows whether all the massive spending other companies are doing will pay off in the long term. As a shareholder, I don’t mind Apple taking its time with A.I. although the share price is lagging. I’m a 20+-year Apple investor, so I’m not going to complain if the share price has dropped a bit this year. That’s just part of the ups and downs of owning a stock.
AAPL gets a couple of down grades and shares are up $3.75. Hmm.