iPhone 17 may be in trouble a few months from now

AI may become a bigger priority for consumers

In his newsletter Power On, industry insider Mark Gurman claims that, while AI still isn’t a top priority for consumers today, that may very well change in a few months time. Current AI features on smartphones can be quite useful, and downright annoyingly intrusive, but they’re always improving at a ridiculous pace.A few months from now, AI on phones — and how good said AI is — may play a much larger role in influencing people’s decisions on which smartphone they want to buy.

Apple Intelligence is still years behind

The revamped Siri is nowhere to be seen. | Image credit — Apple

While Google’s Gemini — which also powers Samsung’s phones like the Galaxy S25 — is thriving, Apple Intelligence is floundering. The company is losing its AI researchers and project leads at an astonishing rate, and the iPhone still cannot perform AI-powered tasks as well as the Galaxy phones, or the Pixel 10 series.

If Gurman is right, and if AI begins to play a much larger role in helping people decide which phone they want to get, then the iPhone 17, the iPhone 18, and future models are in deep trouble.

Likely not going to happen, though

While the severity of this situation seems dire on paper, I think that this is unlikely to happen. AI is cool, really cool, but I think it’ll be a few years before we’re at the point that Gurman warns is only months away.

The iPhone 17 is selling like hot cakes, and the iPhone 18 will too, in my opinion. With the iPhone 18, Apple is moving Face ID under the display, which will be a pretty neat selling factor. And then, with the 20th anniversary iPhone Pro model which will have no cutouts on the display, I think consumers won’t really care about Apple Intelligence.

But, hopefully, by then Apple will have figured out AI.

“Iconic Phones” is coming this Fall!