In early January, Apple shares underperformed, closing recent sessions down approximately 0.5% with daily volumes hitting roughly 50 million shares—about 10% above the three-month average of 45.6 million. This weakness coincided with Alphabet’s market capitalization rising to an estimated $3.92 trillion, eclipsing Apple’s $3.80 trillion and pushing the iPhone maker into third place among the world’s most valuable companies for the first time since 2019. Over the past month, Apple stock has declined nearly 7%, while Alphabet has appreciated close to 4% over the same period and an impressive 87% over six months, as investors reassess each company’s positioning in the AI race.

Despite Apple’s long-standing hardware and services integration, traders on the ‘Fast Money’ program highlighted growing skepticism around the company’s AI roadmap and its ability to monetize cutting-edge features. Analysts noted that competitor AI models—particularly Alphabet’s cloud-based Gemini suite and edge-optimized FunctionGemma—have demonstrated rapid developer adoption and early revenue generation, prompting a reassessment of Apple Intelligence’s launch timeline. Market observers will be closely monitoring Apple’s next product announcements and management reshuffle to gauge whether planned AI features can drive a renewed upgrade cycle and ecosystem engagement.

On January 7, Apple confirmed a multi-year transition to make JPMorgan Chase the exclusive issuer of its flagship credit product, succeeding Goldman Sachs. The swap involves transferring a roughly $20 billion portfolio—66% of which consists of borrowers with FICO scores above 660—over an approximately two-year period. By retaining Mastercard as the network partner and preserving existing rewards, credit histories and banking features, Apple aims to deepen its ecosystem by embedding banking and savings services directly within Apple Wallet. For JPMorgan, this alliance presents an opportunity to cross-sell deposit and lending products to a highly engaged user base, leveraging behavioral data and daily transaction flows for long-term customer retention.