• Apple launched new products in 2024, including the Vision Pro and AI-powered iPhone 16.
• It faced challenges in China with iPhone sales and antitrust issues in the US and Europe.
• Apple also introduced Apple Intelligence at WWDC, marking its entry into the GenAI market.

It's been an eventful year for Apple.

The tech giant launched a brand new hardware product, made its official entrance into generative artificial intelligence, and added a new iPhone generation — all in the span of 12 months.

It's also faced questions about CEO succession, challenges in one of its largest markets, and criticism about being behind in the AI arms race compared to some of the industry's fiercest players. Meantime, it's been under antitrust scrutiny from both US and EU authorities.

"2024 has been a year of notable highs and lows for Apple as it expanded into mixed reality and AI while navigating shifting consumer preferences and market dynamics," Jacob Bourne, tech analyst at Business Insider's sister company EMARKETER, said.

Apple got off to a rocky start this year. Its stock got two analyst downgrades in early January, with bankers citing worries about poor iPhone sales in China. Still, it celebrated wins in the services department of its business and partnered with OpenAI to bring ChatGPT to new iPhones. It explored new territory with the Apple Vision Pro and upgraded company staples, including iPads and AirPods.

Here's a look back at Apple's 2024.

There was trouble in China

Apple started 2024 with struggles in its important Greater China region — a trend that continued. Analysts called sales of the iPhone 15 in China "lackluster" as competitors like Huawei and Xiaomi stepped up their competition in the local smartphone market.

It showed throughout Apple's earnings in 2024. Although the company beat revenue estimates in its fiscal fourth-quarter, sales in China missed and dropped year over year.

Still, Apple CEO Tim Cook said there are "positive signs" in the region during the fiscal Q4 earnings call on October 31. Cook took frequent trips to China this year — at least three times, as of November — amid fears that Donald Trump's potential tariffs will affect the country that makes a majority of Apple's iPhones, AirPods, Macs, and iPads.

"China's just been a disappointment in '24, full stop," Gene Munster, managing partner at Deepwater Asset Management, said.

Apple launched the Vision Pro in February

Apple launched its first headset, the Vision Pro, in February. The mixed reality device retails for $3,500, making it one of Apple's priciest products to date.

The headset was met with mixed reactions. Its uses are limited, and it was unclear if the tech was for gamers or professionals. Months after it released, Cook told The Wall Street Journal that the Vision Pro is for "people who want to have tomorrow's technology today."

"At $3,500, it's not a mass-market product," Cook said. "Right now, it's an early-adopter product."

Apple is reportedly slowing down its Vision Pro production and is instead eyeing a more affordable version of the headset.

It was hit with a DOJ lawsuit in March

The US Department of Justice accused Apple of maintaining an illegal monopoly on the smartphone market in an antitrust lawsuit. The DOJ alleged the iPhone maker was involved in "delaying, degrading, or outright blocking" rival technology. Apple denied the allegations.

The suit said the company "repeatedly responded" to competitive threats by "making it harder or more expensive for its users and developers to leave than by making it more attractive for them to stay."

Apple asked a federal judge to dismiss the lawsuit in August, saying the government's argument includes speculation. US District Court Judge Julien Xavier Neals will have to decide whether or not the case will go to trial.

Neals' decision could come as early as January, Bloomberg reported.

Meanwhile, in Europe, Apple was fined about $2 billion related to its App Store and was subject to other competition concerns in the region.

Apple rolled out new iPads

As OpenAI, Google, and others announced updates and demonstrated the power of their new AI assistants, Apple introduced new iPads in May.

The latest iPad Pro models are the first to have OLED display; Cook and Co. unveiled them at Apple's "Let Loose" event. Cook said it was "the biggest day for iPad since its introduction."

Although the launch came as Apple watchers waited for a bigger AI announcement, iPads performed well for Apple in Q3.

Apple Intelligence was finally introduced at WWDC

The world was introduced to Apple Intelligence at the annual Worldwide Developers Conference in June.

Apple's official debut into the AI wars, which have escalated since OpenAI launched ChatGPT in 2022, was the "biggest story" of the year, William Kerwin, a technology analyst at Morningstar, said.

The hype around Apple Intelligence was instant. Dan Ives, global head of technology research at Wedbush Securities, said it would usher in a "golden upgrade cycle" for iPhones. Apple said it'd be a big part of the iOS 18 software update too, though Apple Intelligence is only available on iPhone 15 Pro models or later.

The company made some lofty promises at WWDC, and plans to deliver on them after the initial rollout in October and through 2025, although not all the features touted have launched yet. So far, US iPhone users have gotten access to "Writing Tools," AI-generated emojis, and ChatGPT through Siri. The company had been criticized for its late entry to the AI scene.

"They caught up by partnering and by adding AI to something only Apple can do," Munster said.

Meanwhile, the company is reportedly exploring ways it can bring Apple Intelligence to Chinese iPhone owners. Apple will have to partner with a local company if it wants to deliver AI to its most important international market.

The first AI iPhone launched

Apple announced its first iPhone "built from the ground up to deliver Apple Intelligence" at its "Glowtime" event in September.

The company faced slowing iPhone sales in the quarters leading up to the launch; the new AI-enabled iPhone 16 was expected by some to be the boost it needed. It released without Apple Intelligence, though that was made available through a later iOS update. It did come with a new camera control button and some software updates.

The phones start at $999 for the iPhone 16 Pro and $1,199 for the Pro Max model. Although a golden upgrade cycle hasn't happened yet, analysts still have high expectations for the next year of iPhones.

"We believe iPhone 16 has kicked off a multi-year supercycle for Apple as the AI Revolution comes to the consumer," Ives said in an analyst note.

It scrapped some projects along the way

Among the new launches in 2024, Apple also axed some ideas that were said to be in the pipeline.

Bloomberg reported in December that Apple would no longer work on building a subscription service for iPhones. The team working to make iPhone ownership possible through monthly fees and annual upgrades was reassigned to other projects, according to the article.

The tech giant also shut down its buy now, pay later service, Apple Pay Later, in June, instead partnering with Klarna to bring its offering to Apple Pay, The Verge reported.

In April, Apple filed documents outlining that it planned to cut more than 600 employees working on projects related to screens and its electric car. Before that, the company reportedly told 2,000 employees that it would wind down its multi-year efforts to make an electric car.

Still, canceling the Apple Car to reassign talent to its Apple Intelligence efforts was part of a "one-two combo" that helped the company catch up in AI, Munster said.

Threads is introducing a new way to reshare photos and videos on its social network. Instead of quote-posting the original post and then adding commentary, Threads users will instead be able to click a new option, “Use media,” allowing them to just reshare the photo or video directly to a new post where they can […]

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Meta’s social network Threads is experimenting with a feature that will let you schedule posts, Instagram head Adam Mosseri said. Users who will get to test this feature won’t be able to schedule replies. “We want to balance giving people more control to plan their Threads posts while still encouraging real-time conversations,” he said. People […]

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• Wall Street has fallen in love with the mobile adtech and gaming company AppLovin.
• AppLovin's recent push into e-commerce sent its market valuation over the $100 billion milestone.
• Some ad industry insiders question the sustainability of its run, however.

Shares in the mobile ads and gaming company AppLovin have been running wild — and advertising industry insiders have a lot of questions.

AppLovin entered the Nasdaq 100 in November, with its market value surpassing the $100 billion milestone and shares up more than 780% so far this year. It's a remarkable ascent for any company, but especially for one that had flown fairly under the radar until recently, even within the ad industry itself.

At its current valuation, AppLovin dwarfs even The Trade Desk, long considered adtech's star performer, which has a market capitalization of around $65 billion.

AppLovin — which helps app developers make money through advertising and find new users through ads — has grown its share to 42% of the mobile gaming market, per analysts at Piper Sandler.

But there's one key new development that's driving its stunning stock run: e-commerce.

Bullish analysts say AppLovin has room to grow further and do for e-commerce marketers what it has for gaming companies, taking on Meta in the process.

"In all my years, it's the best product I've ever seen released by us, fastest growing, but it's still in pilot," AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi said of the company's new e-commerce product on an earnings call last month.

With its stock riding high, some industry insiders also think AppLovin could make a transformative acquisition that would make it a household name.

Still, others in the ad industry say AppLovin's business model deserves some skepticism amid its meteoric rise.

22V Research analyst John Roque wrote in a recent note that AppLovin was the most overbought stock in the Russell 3000.

AppLovin declined to comment on a list of detailed questions about its business.

Investor enthusiasm goes stratospheric

Wall Street's interest in AppLovin soared this year as the company unveiled a plan to go after a new target customer outside the mobile gaming community: e-commerce advertisers.

The move opened up a total addressable ad revenue opportunity of around $120 billion, two to three times the size of the $40 to $50 billion mobile games user acquisition market, according to Macquarie Equity senior analyst Tim Nollen.

Nollen recently raised the firm's target share price for AppLovin to $450 from $270, citing its e-commerce push.

Cody Pfloker, chief marketing and revenue officer for Jones Road Beauty, which is testing AppLovin, said direct-to-consumer advertisers are excited by the prospect of a new player in the market.

"Meta has been the dominant customer acquisition channel for brands and while other platforms have come up like TikTok a few years ago, none are either as efficient or scalable," Pfloker said. "Nothing has been able to dethrone Meta."

AppLovin says it can reach a potential audience of 1.4 billion daily active users across mobile apps and connected-TV devices — an audience comparable to Meta or Google's apps.

Pfloker said part of the appeal is that e-commerce advertisers can easily repurpose their Meta ads into ads for AppLovin's mobile games and other apps.

AppLovin is only inviting e-commerce advertisers that spend upward of $20,000 a day on Meta ads to try its product, and it's incentivizing some of those buyers with $10,000 ad credits, multiple industry insiders told BI. They, like some others in this story, requested anonymity to preserve business relationships; their identities are known to BI.

Prescient AI, a marketing measurement company, ran an analysis in October that found AppLovin delivered a 1.5 times higher return on ad spend for its customers than Meta and Google Adwords, on average.

"A pretty startling thing is happening," said Will Holtz, VP of strategy and operations at Prescient AI. The top spenders are spending 25% to 30% of their budgets on AppLovin, he said, something Prescient hasn't seen before on a new channel, except for something like TV where people bulk up spending over the holidays.

What's more, Holtz added: "They're spending incremental dollars; they're not just shifting budget away from channels like Meta."

It's worth noting that the ads are full-screen and can't be skipped, which also likely boosts some performance metrics compared to other platforms. The results are also early and could fluctuate as more advertisers come on board.

Out-Googling Google

Despite the enthusiasm from some customers, others in the digital ad community have raised concerns about AppLovin.

Some industry insiders attribute AppLovin's performance to its cornering of every part of the mobile app ad transaction.

AppLovin operates AppDiscovery, the technology that advertisers use to buy the ads; the MAX mediation technology developers use to sell their ads; and the ALX exchange that connects the two. It also has Adjust, its ad measurement platform, and AXON, an AI engine designed to improve the performance of its ads.

This could give AppLovin a unique view of the market and allow it to see what different advertisers and buying platforms are bidding. Theoretically, AppLovin could use this intelligence to refine its own ad bidding strategies.

"It's one company for monetizing your app, growing your userbase, and then grading its own homework," a mobile ad veteran told BI. "They say there's a firewall and 'we don't talk,' but it's hard to prove otherwise."

If that sounds familiar, it's because it's similar to how people often describe the approach that helped Google dominate advertising on the web. A judge in Google's adtech antitrust trial is currently weighing whether that strategy, as well as its use of other auction tactics, amounted to Google operating an illegal monopoly. Google denies this and has said the adtech market is fiercely competitive and that its innovations have brought benefits to consumers, publishers, and advertisers.

Jeromy Sonne, the founder of marketing AI technology company Simbiant, has been monitoring the early AppLovin e-commerce results.

He said he'd seen an "extremely high correlation" between when AppLovin sees a spike in conversions and when Meta sees an increase in ad spend. He said he hadn't seen a similar trend when comparing Meta and Google or AppLovin and Google.

He said that made him wonder if AppLovin was driving real incremental value or whether its campaigns were just reaching the exact same audience as Meta in some way.

He said he'd also seen a "concerning overlap" where Shopify sales purportedly driven by AppLovin have a very high geographic overlap with where Meta ad website traffic was coming from.

Separately, Prescient AI's analysis found that brands spending between 25% to 30% of their digital ad budgets on AppLovin acquired fewer incremental new customers than brands in the 5% to 10% range. While reacquiring some old customers isn't necessarily a bad thing, the finding raises questions about the appropriate level of spending advertisers should devote to AppLovin, Prescient AI's Holtz said.

Other advertisers have questioned why AppLovin doesn't share granular data about exactly where their ads ran.

"It's a little bit of a black box — we have no idea where our ads are appearing," Pfloker said of AppLovin. "There's a lot to be excited about, but there's a lot to be skeptical about."

Could AppLovin become SnapLovin?

AppLovin recently paid more than $150 million to add developer Zynga's portfolio of games to its MAX ad exchange as part of Zynga's divestment of its adtech platform Chartboost, three people familiar with the matter told BI. This boosted AppLovin's already huge audience of gamers.

A spokesperson for Zynga owner Take-Two declined to comment.

Some in the industry think AppLovin could make an even bigger move. The company recently sold $3.5 billion in bonds, which Bloomberg reported were to pay down debt "and for general corporate purposes."

Could that include an acquisition?

Alex Merutka, an early AppLovin employee who now runs his own digital marketing company, Craftsman+, thinks AppLovin should make a bid for a social network — a particularly valuable sector of apps because users tend to be logged in, visit often, and share useful data.

People who use mobile games don't usually hand over data like phone numbers or email addresses, vital pieces of information for marketers to help connect their ads to outcomes, and to retarget users with ads.

AppLovin is already trading at a larger market capitalization than Snap, Pinterest, and Reddit combined.

Years ago, Snap held informal, early-stage talks about potentially acquiring AppLovin, a person familiar with the matter told BI.

Perhaps the roles could be reversed this time around. While Snap posted a revenue growth bounceback in its latest quarter, it's struggled to keep momentum amid fierce competition from the likes of TikTok. AppLovin could theoretically help optimize Snap's ad platform for performance advertisers to better compete with Google and Meta.

"If Adam was in control, Snap could be a $100 billion business — a $200 billion, $300 billion company — and AppLovin would be stronger too," Merutka said, referring to AppLovin CEO Adam Foroughi. "There's a lot of opportunity there."

However, AppLovin execs said onstage at the Nasdaq Investor Conference earlier this month that M&A wasn't a near-term priority and that the company was keeping a close eye on its head count and margins.

"It's much harder than people realize, and it's exceptionally hard for a company that's structured like us," Foroughi said of M&A and the difficulty of absorbing different company cultures, according to a transcript provided by the market intelligence platform AlphaSense.

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Twitter alternatives — new and old — have found audiences willing to try out a newer social networks since Elon Musk took over the company in 2022. Mastodon, Bluesky, Spill and T2 are some of the social media platforms people are among them. So is Meta’s Threads platform. What is Threads? How do you create […]

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If you're looking to buy a TV in 2025, you may be disappointed by the types of advancements TV brands will be prioritizing in the new year. While there's an audience of enthusiasts interested in developments in tech like OLED, QDEL, and Micro LED, plus other features like transparency and improved audio, that doesn't appear to be what the industry is focused on.

Today's TV selection has a serious dependency on advertisements and user tracking. In 2025, we expect competition in the TV industry to center around TV operating systems (OSes) and TVs' ability to deliver more relevant advertisements to viewers.

That yields a complicated question for shoppers: Are you willing to share your data with retail conglomerates and ad giants to save money on a TV?

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Meta’s Threads is rolling out its own take on Bluesky’s “Starter Packs,” which are curated lists of suggested accounts that help new users find people to follow. Instagram head Adam Mosseri announced on Thursday that the social network is testing a way for users to find and easily follow collections of profiles that post about […]

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Advertising has become a focal point of TV software. We’re seeing companies that sell TV sets be increasingly interested in leveraging TV operating systems (OSes) for ads and tracking. This has led to bold new strategies, like an adtech firm launching a TV OS and ads on TV screensavers.

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TCL's five short films are part of a company initiative to get people more accustomed to movies and TV shows made with generative AI. The movies will “be promoted and featured prominently on” TCL's free ad-supported streaming television (FAST) service, TCLtv+, TCL announced in November. TCLtv+has hundreds of FAST channels and comes on TCL-brand TVs using various OSes, including Google TV and Roku OS.

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Threads is testing the ability for its users to see how well their individual posts performed on the social network. Up until now, Threads’ “Insights” feature only showed you aggregated metrics for all of your posts. Now, the feature can show you metrics for each post. If you’re in the test, you can sort posts […]

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Bluesky has blown up this year thanks to a vibrant community of posters, user customization choices, and a decentralized protocol that doesn’t lock users into the choices of a billionaire CEO. But one question mark hanging over Bluesky is how the platform will eventually make money, and whether it will use the most common business […]

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A new update from Meta’s X competitor Instagram Threads allows users to connect more with the fediverse, which is also called the open social web and includes services like Flipboard, Mastodon, Pixelfed, PeerTube, and more. On Wednesday, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that users can now follow profiles from other fediverse servers. Starting today, users […]

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Instagram Threads, Meta’s competitor to Elon Musk’s X, is testing a way to make your replies to others’ posts less visible on the platform. The company is adding a new privacy feature that allows you to customize your profile to remove the tab that displays your replies. This leaves only the two tabs that show […]

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There's nothing quite like a deep dive into the shallow, vomitous puddles of children's splash pads. Even toeing the edge is enough to have one longing for the unsettling warmth of a kiddie pool. But the brave souls at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention have done it, wading into 25 years' worth of records on gastrointestinal outbreaks linked to the wellsprings of fecal pathogens. And they unsurprisingly found enough retch-inducing results to make any modern-day John Snows want to start removing some water handles.

Between 1997 and 2022, splash pads across the country were linked to at least 60 outbreaks, with the largest sickening over 2,000 water frolickers in one go. In all, the outbreaks led to at least 10,611 illnesses, 152 hospitalizations, and 99 emergency department visits. People, mostly children, were sickened with pathogens including Cryptosporidium, Camplyobacter jejuni, Giardia duodenalis, Salmonella, Shigella, and norovirus, according to the analysis, published Tuesday in the CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report. The tallies of outbreaks and illnesses are likely undercounts, given reporting delays and missed connections.

Though previous outbreak-based studies have provided bursts of data, the new analysis is the first to provide a comprehensive catalog of all the documented outbreaks since splash pads erupted in the 1990s. Together, they provide a clear, stomach-churning explanation of how the outbreaks keep happening. Basically, small children go into the watery playgrounds while they're sick and spread their germs.

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There are plenty of services that let you build lists to track and discover new books, movies, and songs, but often, these lists end up getting siloed. Former Squarespace employee Alfonso Cobo wanted to bring all kinds of lists together, and he’s trying to do that with Hypelist. Cobo said the ethos behind creating Hypelist […]

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Meta’s X competitor Instagram Threads is gaining an improved search interface, the company announced on Monday. The app, which offers a Meta-run alternative to Elon Musk’s X, but built on top of Instagram’s social graph, is rolling out a new way to search for specific posts, allowing users to filter searches by user profiles and […]

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OpenAI is toying with a move into ads, per the Financial Times. CFO Sarah Friar told the newspaper it’s weighing an ads business model, with plans to be “thoughtful” about when and where ads appear. In a follow-on statement, Friar stressed it has “no active plans to pursue advertising,” but it seems clear the idea […]

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