Apple Embraced The Developer With Its '4-Platform Palooza'

UBS believes there wasn't any earth-shaking news in Apple Inc. AAPL's keynote address. However, there were several interesting announcements at the 2016 Worldwide Developer Conference, which included enhancements of platforms to attract developers and product enhancements.

The brokerage has a Buy rating and $115 price target on the iPhone maker. The analysts said in a note that Apple updated its developers to 13 million from 11 million while payment to them increased to $50 billion in January from $40 billion.

Related Link: Apple's 3 Most Important WWDC Announcements

UBS highlighted seven big announcements. The first was improving the Apple Watch Interface making it more intuitive. The second was in respect of single sign-on to pay-TV channels for TV OS, as well as iOS. The third one was Apple Pay, which works on the web now whereas the fourth related to the launching of Siri, which is now based on deep learning. The fifth announcement related to facial recognition of photos performed locally. The sixth and the seven related to home as an app for home automation and opening iMessage to developers.

"We recently asked if Apple gets platforms (link). Apparently it does based on the litany of technologies being opened up to developers, including Siri, Maps, and Messages. We consider the operating systems to be the primary platforms (Cook pointed to four: iOS, macOS, tvOS, and watchOS) with Apple Pay, Apple Music, and the App Store transaction platforms (link)," the analysts said.

The brokerage believes Apple should eventually depend on cloud computing to take complete advantage of AI.