Apple's 3 Most Important WWDC Announcements

Apple Inc. AAPL began its Worldwide Developers Conference [WWDC] 2016 on June 13. Goldman Sachs’ Simona Jankowski maintained a Buy rating for the company, with a price target of $124. The analyst commented that the announcements made at the WWDC were in-line with broader expectations and were unlikely to impact the stock in the near term.

3 Most Important Announcements

Analyst Simona Jankowski mentioned that the three most important announcements made by Apple were related to Siri, Apple Pay, and Apple TV. All of these “add significant value to the ecosystem, supporting hardware purchases and margins longer-term.”

1. Siri: Siri for macOS was launched, opening up to third-party apps. While Siri had certain competitive advantages like being multilingual, the latest development brings Apple’s capability more in-line with that of Echo by Amazon.com, Inc. AMZN.
2. Apple Pay: Apple Pay is now available on Macs. Authentication is enabled via Touch ID on the iPhone. This not only puts Apple in more direct competition with Paypal Holdings Inc PYPL, but also “uniquely leverages its platform advantage,” although this limits the user base to Mac and iPhone owners, Jankowski said.
3. Apple TV: Apple TV would now come with Sling TV, a bundle of 27 channels priced at $20 per month offered by DISH Network Corp DISH. Moreover, the user would have an Apple-enabled single sign-on on Apple TV, rather than having to authenticate separately for each app or channel. “With 1,300 channels, 6,000 apps, and over 650,000 TV episodes/movies, the Apple TV experience is becoming richer and now more seamless, another step in the evolution to “Apple-as-a-Service”,” the analyst wrote.