Piper Jaffray Sees Improvements to Siri in Apple iOS 7

In a report published Tuesday, Piper Jaffray analyst Gene Munster reiterated an Overweight rating and $640.00 price target on

(NASDAQ; AAPL). In the report, Piper Jaffray noted, “Based on our checks of 800 queries on Siri, Apple has made improvements to Siri's ability to recognize and answer speech requests. We graded Siri with a D in our first test in summer 2012 and a C last December. Siri has now improved to a C+. Siri tied overall with Google Now in effectiveness as both platforms understood 79% of the total queries asked. We note the biggest change in Siri's results over the past year is the near elimination of Google from results (replaced with Bing, WolframAlpha, and Wikipedia). Net-net, Siri's reliance on Google decreased from 27% of answers in December 2012 to 4% now. We believe Siri and Google Now will continue to evolve as Apple and Google compete on voice commands to differentiate their mobile OS's.” Apple closed on Monday at $566.43.