In its latest report, Morgan Stanley raised its target price for Apple and listed it as a "preferred stock," citing the company's efforts in artificial intelligence as driving sales growth for its devices.

As a result, on Monday (July 15th), Apple's stock price rose 1.67% to $234.4, and the company's market value reached a historic high of $3.59 trillion.

Morgan Stanley has raised its target price for Apple from $216 to $273. This means that there is still 16% upside potential for the stock, with a market value of $4.2 trillion.

Apple officially announced its "Apple Intelligence" generative artificial intelligence plan on June 10th, which includes integrating the popular ChatGPT chatbot into the new iOS operating system to be released in September. Since the announcement, Apple's stock price has risen by over 20%, surpassing the 5% increase in the S&P 500 index.

Apple has stated that Apple Intelligence is only available for iPhone 15 Pro/Pro Max and subsequent new models.

Analyst Erik Woodring wrote in the report that Apple Intelligence has the potential to drive a new high in the number of device upgrades for Apple. He said, "Apple Intelligence is clearly the catalyst driving the growth of iPhone and iPad shipments.

Woodring said, "In Apple's 40 year history of development, the iPhone user base has never been so large (over 1.3 billion devices), the replacement cycle has never been so long (4.8 years), and new technologies have never been limited to such a small user base (8% of the iPhone/iPad user base) at the same time.

Woodring predicts that Apple's new iPhone sales are expected to reach 498 million units in fiscal years 2025 and 2026.

In addition to Morgan Stanley's analyst team, Loop Capital analysts led by Ananda Baruah have also raised Apple's target price.

Loop Capital has changed its rating on Apple stock from 'hold' to 'buy' and significantly raised its target price from $231 to $300, the highest target price among all analysts tracked by FactSet. $300 means that Apple's market value will reach $4.6 trillion, which is about 28% higher than it is now.

According to Loop Capital's report, just as Apple has done in digital content (iPod) and social media (iPhone), Apple has the ability to become the preferred generative artificial intelligence "stronghold" for consumers.

According to LSEG data, the current average rating for Apple is "buy", with a median target price of $217, and its performance this year is better than the S&P 500 index.

However, although analysts are optimistic about Apple's growth potential next year, it still cannot conceal the reality of the company's current weak sales, especially its sales pillar iPhone.

According to the latest data from IDC, in the three months ending in June, Apple sold 45.2 million smartphones worldwide, up from 44.5 million in the same period last year, with a slight increase of only 1.5% year-on-year. During the same period, global smartphone shipments increased by 6.5% year-on-year. Meanwhile, although Apple remains the second ranked brand, its market share has declined from 16.6% in the same period last year to 15.8%.

In addition, according to FactSet data, analysts predict that Apple's iPhone sales in the second quarter of this year will be $38.7 billion, which will be the weakest quarter since September 2020.