iPhones remain a crucial part of Apple's business — arguably the one product above all that people associate with the Cupertino company. But there could come a day when Apple's smartphone is no longer part of the picture.
That's not the analysis of some random observer, either — rather, it comes straight from a high-ranking Apple executive.
"You may not need an iPhone 10 years from now as crazy as it sounds," said Eddy Cue, senior vice president of services for Apple, during testimony in a U.S. Justice Department lawsuit against Alphabet, the parent company of Google.
According to Bloomberg's report on the testimony, Cue made his comments about the iPhone in the context of explaining how shifts in technology can make today's killer products tomorrow's after-thoughts. Specifically, Cue noted that the rise of artificial intelligence — currently, the fascination of the tech industry — could wind up producing something that takes the iPhone's place.
“The only way you truly have true competition is when you have technology shifts," Cue said. "Technology shifts create these opportunities. AI is a new technology shift, and it’s creating new opportunities for new entrants."
It's not just phones that could lose ground to AI. Cue said in his testimony that Apple is looking into revamping Safari to rely on AI-powered search engines — a development that could be a potential blow to Google's search business.
For now, though, the iPhone remains Apple's dominant product , especially with tools like Apple Intelligence still in their nascent stages. For the 2024 fiscal year, iPhones sales brought in $201.1 billion, around 51% of Apple's total for the year. In the just announced March quarter, that percentage is now 49%, as areas like services accounting for a growing portion of Apple's sales.
You don't have to look too far in Apple's history to see a once-dominant product fall out of favor over time. Cue himself alluded to the iPod, the music player that revived Apple's fortunes 20 years ago only to fall by the wayside as the iPhone took over.
Apple discontinued the iPod touch in 2022, marking the end of its music player products. But at its height in 2006, iPod sales accounted for 40% of Apple's revenue, according to data posted at Statista.
"You may not need an iPhone 10 years from now as crazy as it sounds."
— Eddy Cue, Apple
Cue isn't the first tech executive to muse about smartphones going the way of the iPod, not even at Apple. Meta's Mark Zuckerberg has been making the rounds touting smart glasses as a potential phone replacement, coinciding with his company's work on the Orion AR glasses. And reports that Tim Cook is focusing his time nearly entirely on smart glasses as an eventual follow-up to the Vision Pro headset that marked Apple's first steps into spatial computing.
Ten years is a long time, so don't expect Apple to back away from the still lucrative iPhone business just yet. But Apple's WWDC 2025 conference is a month away, and while iOS 19 will certainly get its share of attention, potential announcements about visionOS and AI should also be of interest. If Apple does see a limited future for iPhones, we may get our first inkling of what the company has in mind for an encore in some of those previews.
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