Apple Stock Loses Retail Euphoria After Blowout Earnings; Will New AI Siri Reignite Confidence?

Apple will roll out iOS 26.4 beta on Feb. 23, Bloomberg reported.

• Investors and fans will be watching closely to see whether Apple meets expectations for its long-awaited Apple Intelligence features, beginning with an overhauled Siri assistant.
• Apple has a busy product calendar this year, with new Mac launches in March and the potential launch of its rumoured foldable iPhone in the latter part of 2026.
• Apple stock jumped over 7% last week, its best such gain in six months.

Apple will release the first beta version of iOS 26.4 to developers in the week of Feb. 23. The iPhone operating system update will have “some components” of Siri, with the full version expected to be previewed at Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference in June, according to the report.

Upcoming Apple Releases

The revamped Siri would feature a redesigned interface, improved natural language understanding, on-screen awareness, and deeper cross-app controls, according to recent news reports. A ChatGPT-like Siri chatbot is also planned, though its release timing is uncertain.

MacRumours reported that the ‌Siri‌ version in iOS 26.4 will have LLMs at its core and features built around it. A major shift from the current version, which lacks reasoning capabilities and relies on multiple task-specific models to complete a request, the new Siri will understand requests in context and act accordingly.

On the product side, Apple will launch the low-cost iPhone 17e imminently, according to Bloomberg. The key change from the predecessor, the iPhone 16e, is the inclusion of the A19 chip and MagSafe charging. The company will then release new 14-inch and 16-inch MacBook Pros and the MacBook Air with an M5 processor in March. 

Test For Apple’s Momentum

Investors will be closely watching the new products, tech strategy messaging, and whether they carry Apple’s nascent momentum forward.

The iPhone maker posted blowout December quarter results, which boosted the stock by over 7% last week – its best run since the first full week of August.

In the quarter, iPhone sales rose 23% as the iPhone 17 lineup prompted numerous upgrades among users, driving record revenue for Apple. The projected 13% to 16% higher sales in the March quarter were also ahead of Wall Street’s 10% expectation. 

Curiously, retail enthusiasm fizzled as the week drew to a close. Stocktwits sentiment for AAPL dropped from ‘extremely high’ after the earnings release until Friday to ‘bearish’ as of late Sunday.

“I don’t see this bull flag playing out before the whole market pulls back… I see a slow burn downward with one big down day mixed in near future,” a user forecast.

After last week’s rally, Apple shares are in the green year to date and are up 2.3%.

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