Apple will pay Google $1 billion for Siri's AI brain transplant
#435: A Silicon Valley insider reveals why the smartphone rivals are burying the axe to keep the iPhone relevant in the AI era...
Update: This post sparked a lively debate on LinkedIn as readers challenged the data arguing that China’s billion smartphone users must have a larger impact.
It sent us all down a data rabbit hole. Discover what we learned together…
Unless you’ve been living under a rock you’ll have heard that Apple is jumping into bed with Google to embed its Gemini AI as the brain in its best-selling iPhone.
Apple will pay its deadliest smartphone rival $1 billion-a-year to power Siri and bring a slew of long-promised Apple Intelligence tools to market later this year.
The deal raises enormous questions about privacy, competition and consumer choice, given the pair carve up 99.7 per cent of the global smartphone market.
To get the inside info, I invited someone in the know - Reuters’ tech correspondent Stephen Nellis who covers Apple and Silicon Valley - to break it down.
How will Apple, which markets itself as privacy first, work with Google which has built a $4 trillion monopoly by harvesting the world’s data?
And won’t the deal create a new monopoly in smartphones just as regulators are trying to decide how to dismantle Google’s other three in search, ads and app stores?
I kicked off by asking Stephen why Apple’s doing the deal. “Basically, it’s because Siri sucks, and Apple has to,” he replied.
It’s a cracking chat that unravels 20 years of rivalry, missteps, and multi-billion dollar backroom deals - that’s now putting Apple on a new path. Enjoy…
