The Apple Car may roll out between 2023 and 2025, predicts an analyst, as the company drives towards its next trillion.
Highly-respected analyst Ming-Chi Kuo of TF Securities, who has a virtually impeccable track record predicting what Apple products will launch when, today sent out a new note for investors (via Mac Rumors) outlining products that he expects to see in Apple’s future.
Kuo discusses how Apple could reach a $2 trillion market cap after it reached the $1 trillion USD mark earlier this month. “Services, AR, and Apple Car will create Apple’s next trillion-dollar market cap,” he wrote in the research note.
The car will be Apple’s “next star product” and revolutionize the auto industry like the iPhone did the smartphone market in 2007. Kuo bases this prediction on a belief that there are “huge replacement demands” in the auto sector since it’s being redefined by technological advances. Apple’s work in areas like augmented reality put the company ahead of its peers.
While previous reports regarding the company’s secretive project suggest Apple would instead develop an autonomous driving technology for use with other vehicles, Kuo claims that Apple will release its own branded car for a few reasons, the first being that the automotive sector is being redefined by technology in the same way as the smartphone industry 10 years ago.
Other reasons the Cupertino company is moving forward with the project include the fact that Apple can differentiate with augmented reality and other technologies, car financing would help Apple’s services sector grow, and the company could do a better job of integrating hardware and software than existing automakers.
“Apple’s service will grow significantly by entering the huge car finance market via Apple Car, and […] Apple can do a better integration of hardware, software, and service than current competitors in the consumer electronics sector and potential competitors in the auto sector,” Kuo explains.
Apple has been known to be working on its car project, dubbed Project Titan, since at least 2014. However, over the past few years rumors have alleged Apple had greatly scaled back the project. If Kuo is correct, Apple has once again changed gears, and in five to seven short years we may be seeing lots of Apple logos on the road.
