From the hot sale of iPhone 17 to the "AI reasoning super blue ocean" Apple Inc. (AAPL.US) quietly steps into a new bull market trajectory.

Wall Street financial giant Bank of America Corp (Bank of America) said on Monday that the delivery cycle of Apple Inc.'s (AAPL.US) latest iPhone 17 smartphone series products is still far higher than last year's iPhone models, and provided the latest update on delivery data from last week. Bank of America's latest report undoubtedly highlights that despite being criticized by some users for lacking highlights after the launch event, the new iPhone 17 has very strong actual demand driven by AI functions and key performance upgrades. Among them, the demand for the standard version and Pro Max models is the strongest - which also largely indicates that Apple Inc. users who have not upgraded their phones for 4-5 years have started upgrading to the iPhone 17. In addition, the recent resurgence in Apple Inc.'s stock price logic is due to the market beginning to price Apple Inc. as the "super winner" of the "AI reasoning era". A recent research report released by the well-known Wall Street investment firm Bernstein shows that by 2030, the massive AI reasoning systems will bring a trillion-dollar level "super blue ocean," which should bring long-term benefits to these large technology companies focusing on IT hardware and consumer electronics, such as the consumer electronics giant Apple Inc. Since September, Apple Inc.'s stock price, which has been mostly weak this year, has rebounded strongly by over 10%, as demand for the iPhone 17 is strong and the market begins to price Apple Inc.'s benefit from the trillion-dollar level "AI reasoning super blue ocean". Wall Street's bullish sentiment towards Apple Inc. is also growing, with recent Wall Street analysts covering Apple Inc. generally optimistic about Apple Inc.'s stock price approaching the $300 mark. As of Monday's U.S. stock market close, Apple Inc.'s stock price closed at $254.430, with a market value stable at $3.8 trillion, second only to NVIDIA Corporation and Microsoft Corporation. iPhone 17 series delivery cycle still far higher than last year A delivery time significantly longer than last year is often interpreted as the most important signal of "demand> supply," serving as a catalyst for short-term sales expectations. Bank of America Corp analyst Wamsi Mohan wrote in his latest research report to clients that as of September 29, the overall statistics from Apple Inc.'s official website and various partner operator websites show that the delivery time for the iPhone 17 is about 19 days. "Compared to the previous generation iPhone - the iPhone 16 series with a preliminary delivery cycle of 5 days, this indicates a very strong demand for the iPhone 17 series," said Mohan. The Bank of America report shows that further analysis reveals that the delivery date for the standard iPhone 17 model in the Chinese market is the longest, at 25 days, while in other international regions it is generally around 18 days, highlighting the strong demand for the standard model. Furthermore, from a global perspective, the overall delivery cycle of the more expensive iPhone 17 Pro models and iPhone 17 Pro Max are similar to last year's, but the delivery time for the Pro Max model is slightly higher than last year, while the Pro model remains the same. Channel data compiled by Bank of America shows that the delivery time for the iPhone 17 Pro is 14 days, while the iPhone 17 Max has a delivery time of up to 21 days. Mohan added that the availability of U.S. carriers seems to be better than that from Apple Inc.'s own distribution channels: for direct purchases from Apple Inc.'s platform, the delivery cycle for the Pro model ranges from two to three weeks, while carriers in the U.S. have a delivery cycle of only about 9 days. Mohan noted that in the Chinese market, due to government subsidies for consumer electronics products under 6,000 RMB, as well as insufficient supply of the iPhone Air due to the eSIM factor, the iPhone 17 standard series may sell very well in the Chinese market. However, Mohan said that channel data shows that the iPhone Air is "well supplied" globally and its demand is not inferior to the standard iPhone 17 model, with an average global delivery time of just three days. "The shorter official delivery time for the Air may indicate higher initial inventory, as Apple Inc. likely anticipated strong demand for the iPhone Air," speculated analyst Mohan. AI reasoning dominates trillion-dollar blue ocean There is no doubt that the recent disclosure of the global cloud computing giant Oracle Corporation's contract backlog far exceeding market expectations of $455 billion, as well as the strong performance and future outlook announced by the global AI ASIC chip "super powerhouse" Broadcom Inc. at the beginning of September, greatly strengthens the "long-term bullish narrative" of the AI reasoning computing power infrastructure sector, including AI GPUs, ASICs, and HBM. The AI power demand brought by the reasoning endpoint dominated by generative AI application software and highly intelligent AI agents is a "vast universe," likely to drive the artificial intelligence computing power infrastructure market to continue to exhibit exponential growth, and the "AI reasoning system" is believed to be NVIDIA Corporation's largest revenue source, according to Huang Renxun. NVIDIA Corporation CEO Huang Renxun even predicts that by 2030, AI infrastructure expenditure will reach $30 trillion to $40 trillion, with its scale and scope presenting significant long-term growth opportunities. "While there are still short-term concerns in the market about the AI bubble, we believe that there is still significant upward potential for IT hardware and consumer electronics in the long term," wrote the analyst team from Bernstein. "Although there is a huge range of uncertainty in the results, in our base case scenario for 2030, we conservatively set enterprise-side reasoning costs at around $1.3 trillion (meaning an expected compound annual growth rate of about 67% for the period 2025-2030)." "We believe that continuous improvement and iterative updates to models are key leading indicators, and we caution that massive capital expenditures may be a lagging indicator. In addition to being positive about the long-term prospects, we also believe that there are still healthy early signs of the recent prosperity in artificial intelligence development, and overall we have a positive view on this theme," the Bernstein analyst team stated. As for Apple Inc., the institution refers to the tech giant that owns consumer electronics products such as the iPhone and iPad as "one of the best entry points for the artificial intelligence reasoning revolution." The analysts at Bernstein believe that under the leadership of Tim Cook, this tech giant is one of the best-positioned and most likely to benefit among the tech giants in the sector of artificial intelligence deployment. According to statistics, the active devices in Apple Inc.'s ecosystem have reached 2.35 billion, which means that once reasoning capabilities are integrated into the system layer, developers can "plug and play" to reach a massive number of end-users, which is the core AI engineering advantage of Apple Inc.'s device-side "artificial intelligence entry." Apple Inc.'s AI application tool - Apple Intelligence is designed to run locally as a priority, only calling for larger-scale cloud AI models through Private Cloud Compute (PCC) when necessary, and moving Apple Inc.'s end-to-end security model "to the cloud" to provide verifiable transparency and minimal data residency, which is highly attractive for building sensitive scenarios (personal and enterprise data). Apple Inc. CEO Tim Cook recently defended the enduring strong influence of the iPhone, stating that even in the upcoming era of artificial intelligence, where complementary intelligent electronic devices are emerging, the iPhone will remain the core of people's lives.