Wedbush: iPhone 16 series first week sales are optimistic, Apple Inc. (AAPL.US) stock price begins a new round of increase.

For a long time, the Wall Street well-known investment firm Wedbush Securities, which has been bullish on technology stocks, stated that despite some relatively negative concerns, the firm firmly believes that the first week sales of the iPhone 16 series seem very optimistic for Apple Inc.'s performance growth, and that the data on first week sales of the new generation iPhone is the "beginning" of a new round of stock price increase for Apple Inc. Wedbush's senior analyst Dan Ives maintained a "outperform" rating on Apple Inc. stock and a 12-month price target of up to $300. In pre-market trading on Monday, Apple Inc.'s stock price remained relatively unchanged, down slightly by 0.53% to $226.980 at the time of writing. "With the official launch of the iPhone 16 series over the weekend, we believe that Apple Inc. will have a 'very strong demand beginning' in this crucial smartphone upgrade cycle," wrote Dan Ives' Wedbush analysis team in an investor report. "While the heavyweight AI feature from Apple Inc. will be released in stages over the next few months, we believe that the unit sales growth of the iPhone 16 series will reach high single digits starting from the December sales quarter, and may even reach double digits." According to well-known Apple Inc. leaker and Bloomberg columnist Mark Gurman, based on early discussions on the release day, the iPhone 16 series "is likely to become a popular product series for Apple Inc." Gurman is renowned for accurately revealing details of iPhone product updates ahead of time. Ives' team added that with artificial intelligence functionality ready to be fully integrated, as well as camera upgrades and extended battery life as part of the iPhone 16 series refresh, the upgrade cycle for the iPhone 16 series may see an initial shipment volume of around 90 million units by 2024, an increase of 80 to 100 million units from the iPhone 15 series. Ives' team said, "According to our research and forecasts, out of approximately 1.5 billion iPhone products in the past four years, there are about 300 million units that have not been upgraded yet, providing Apple Inc. with an excellent historic opportunity for its iPhone upgrade cycle, making the iPhone 16 series likely to be the start of a consumer electronics super upgrade cycle driven by AI technology." The team added that Apple Inc. is expected to sell more than 240 million iPhone products in the entire 2025 fiscal year, "as this AI-driven upgrade cycle is gaining momentum." Prior to the release of the aforementioned report reiterating Apple Inc.'s target stock price and the belief that first week sales are the "optimistic beginning" for Apple Inc.'s stock, the Wedbush Securities analysis team had repeatedly stated that more and more market research evidence indicates that the next generation of Apple Inc. smartphones, the iPhone 16 series, may bring about the long-awaited "growth revival" and a new round of "super upgrade cycles" for Apple Inc. product fans and stock fans. Apple Inc. currently has a total market value of $3.47 trillion, maintaining its status as the "world's highest market value listed company." Other Wall Street institutions are generally optimistic about Apple Inc.'s stock price trend in the next 12 months, with Morgan Stanley setting a target price of $273 and reiterating a "hold" rating. Another Wall Street giant, Citigroup, has designated Apple Inc. as the "preferred stock" for its artificial intelligence-related stocks before 2025, with a target price of $255; Apple Inc. currently ranks ahead of the leader in AI infrastructure, NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA.US) and Arista Networks (ANET.US) in Citigroup's list of AI stocks. Tipranks shows that the average target price set by Wall Street analysts for Apple Inc. is as high as $249.83, indicating that the market value behemoth Apple Inc., with a market value of $3 trillion, has a potential upside of nearly 10% in the eyes of Wall Street analysts.