Wedbush Securities analyst Dan Ives predicts that Apple (AAPL, Financial) will become the first company to achieve a market valuation of $4 trillion by 2025, followed closely by NVIDIA (NVDA). According to Wedbush, many overlook Apple's vast base of over 2 billion installed iOS devices, including approximately 300 million iPhones that are due for an upgrade. The company's services business is valued at $2 trillion, and its consumer artificial intelligence (AI) initiatives are expected to thrive within its ecosystem. The firm maintains an "outperform" rating on Apple, with a target price of $300.
Apple is expected to sell over 240 million iPhones in 2025, potentially marking its most successful year of iPhone sales ever. In China alone, Apple could sell about 100 million iPhones during this upgrade cycle. The release of iOS 18.2 is anticipated to usher in a new era for the tech giant, with AI being a central component of this transformation. Ives asserts Apple's future will be defined by next-generation chip architecture, new hardware releases, and AI-integrated iPhone models.
Previously, Ives predicted Apple's market cap would reach $4 trillion by the end of 2024, driven by rapid growth and monetization. In June 2024, he called Apple's AI capabilities announcement a "historic" moment, serving as a catalyst toward this valuation milestone.
Earlier this month, Wedbush identified Apple, NVIDIA, and Microsoft (MSFT) as leaders in AI spending, predicting that one of these giants would hit the $4 trillion mark within 6 to 9 months. NVIDIA is expected to follow Apple into the $4 trillion club by 2025. The chip giant recently surpassed Apple as the world's largest company by market cap, having achieved a valuation of $1 trillion a year ago and more than doubling since then.
