Apple whose artificial intelligence efforts have stumbled over the last few months has undergone a management reshuffle as it attempts to get back on track.
The company’s CEO Tim Cook has reportedly lost confidence in AI head John Giannandrea’s abilities on product development, reported Bloomberg.
Vision Pro creator Mike Rockwell is being drafted in to help. Rockwell will be in charge of Siri and will report to software chief Craig Federighi, removing Siri from Giannandrea’s command. For now, Giannandrea is expected to continue working at the company.
Paul Meade, an executive who has run hardware engineering for the Vision Pro under Rockwell, will take over Vision Products Group at Apple.
The Apple Intelligence platform, which was the main selling point of the iPhone 16 was not only delayed, but released in a staggered rollout and reached markets such as Australia only in December last year.
It has yet to launch in China with the Asian country citing local regulatory requirements as one of the reasons why the AI platform is still locked outside one of the US company’s biggest markets.
Apple has struggled to release new features within Siri announced last June. It has now said that an AI-version of Siri will only be released in the “coming year”. In a statement, it confirmed: “In just the past six months, we’ve made Siri more conversational, introduced new features like type to Siri and product knowledge, and added an integration with ChatGPT.
“We’ve also been working on a more personalised Siri, giving it more awareness of your personal context, as well as the ability to take action for you within and across your apps. It’s going to take us longer than we thought to deliver on these features, and we anticipate rolling them out in the coming year,” the company said.
The company has struggled to get anywhere near the levels of AI technology development and implementation as its rivals Samsung and Google are with their devices.
Apple’s slow progress with AI and Siri has been slammed by senior manager Robby Walker who has described the delays as an “ugly” situation.
Apple smartwatch shipments dropped 19% in 2024 and it held a 22% market share, compared to a 25% grip in 2023, according to data released by Counterpoint.
As Apple struggles with its AI strategy, it also revealed that sales of its main product – the iPhone – dropped over the last quarter. In Q4 of the US 2025 financial year, iPhone sales dropped 1% to A$111.16 billion.
One of the possible reasons for declining sales is that the iPhone 16 did not introduce major hardware innovations compared to the previous model. The fact that Apple has failed to make a convincing consumer use case for its Apple Intelligence platform has only further added to the faltering sales of the device.
Since the start of this year, Apple’s share price is down more than 12% and currently trading at around the $214.1 (A$340) mark.
