Fitness+ business streamlining, $1,999 foldable screen and AI strategy take the lead! Apple Inc. (AAPL.US) is brewing a new round of strong growth.

Title context: Fitness+ business streamlining, $1,999 foldable screen and AI strategy take the lead! Apple Inc. (AAPL.US) is brewing a new round of strong growth. Text: U.S. consumer electronics giant Apple Inc. (AAPL.US), while reassessing the future of its Fitness+ fitness subscription service, has cut some employees in that division, signaling a possible shift in the development focus of this online fitness subscription platform. This Fitness+ adjustment can be seen as a major signal that Apple Inc. is optimizing resource allocation and its services business mix, striving to accelerate the shift of its performance growth focus toward the expensive foldable-screen iPhone and Apple Inc.'s AI strategy, one of its future core growth themes. According to media reports, the layoffs involved a small number of audio business employees, and the specific savings amount and where the budget will flow have not been disclosed. The more valuable change is that fitness content may be further integrated with the Health app: Apple Inc. has already announced that within the year it will launch a new version of Health supported by Apple Intelligence (that is, Apple Inc.'s AI service system), connecting health data, personalized insights, and personalized fitness education content. If Fitness+ integration continues to advance, it is expected to reduce fragmented content investment, allow data collected by Apple Watch to be more effectively translated into daily service experiences on Apple Inc. endpoint devices such as the iPhone, and thereby enhance device stickiness and subscription retention. The stronger growth catalyst with greater weight for future performance will undoubtedly be the high-end product mix upgrade brought by the expensive foldable-screen iPhone, as well as a new round of Apple Inc. replacement demand driven by endpoint + cloud inference AI experiences. The already released iPhone Duo starts at $1,999, features a 7.6-inch inner display, and supports side-by-side operation of two apps, undoubtedly adding a higher-priced product tier for Apple Inc. For the foldable screen, the Apple Inc. AI system will be able to use the broader display space to allow users to view information on one side and interact efficiently with Apple Inc.'s AI super voice assistant Siri AI on the other, with personal context understanding and cross-app operations further improving multitasking efficiency, thereby enhancing the practical value of the high-priced product. Fitness subscription faces adjustment, new iPhone product line and AI strategy attract market attention Media reports citing people familiar with the matter said Apple Inc. is considering re-planning its Fitness+ fitness subscription service. The people familiar with the matter said that while Apple Inc. is reassessing the future of the Fitness+ subscription service, it has cut some employees in the division, signaling a possible change in the platform's development focus. Overall, the layoffs implemented last week involved Fitness+ audio business staff, including content such as "Time to Walk" and "Time to Run," which users can listen to through Apple Watch without needing to watch video. Apple Inc. (AAPL.US) shares fell 0.2% in overnight trading before Monday. Over the past week, Apple Inc. shares rose 1.2%, a period that also included the major launch of the all-new iPhone 18 Pro and foldable-screen iPhone products. Apple Inc. will not cancel these audio contents, but media reports said the release frequency of new content is expected to decrease. According to reports, the company internally also views this latest round of layoffs as a potential starting point for broader cost cuts and Fitness+ adjustments over the coming months and even years. Apple Inc. has been reassessing Fitness+ since earlier this year; the service competes fiercely with AI-based fitness platforms such as Peloton. One potential direction is to integrate Fitness+ more deeply into Apple Inc.'s revamped Health app. Apple Inc. is already preparing a major revamp of the Health app, including adding video content that explains health topics and personal baseline metrics. At the same time, Apple Inc.'s latest iPhone lineup, including the all-new iPhone Duo, has become a focus of investor and analyst attention since its release. Duo marks Apple Inc.'s entry into the foldable smartphone market and is positioned as an important new product form rather than a short-lived experiment. As a result, the market is closely watching early reactions for signals about Duo demand and Apple Inc.'s overall iPhone strategy. Senior Wall Street analysts are also actively assessing whether this new form factor can bring a new replacement cycle for Apple Inc.'s most important product, especially as the company continues to expand Apple Intelligence and AI features. On the Stocktwits platform, retail investors' sentiment on Apple Inc. (AAPL.US) shares and fundamental growth declined over the past week, standing at "bearish" as of Monday morning. But since the start of this year, Apple Inc. shares have risen sharply by 23.3%. Fitness+ adjustment optimizes Apple Inc.'s internal resource allocation, foldable screen and AI redraw Apple Inc.'s growth path This Fitness+ adjustment can be seen as a signal that Apple Inc. is optimizing resource allocation and its service portfolio. Its support for the foldable screen and AI strategy is mainly reflected in organizational efficiency and the increasingly coordinated expansion of Apple Inc.'s Apple consumer electronics ecosystem. Apple Inc. recently announced that within the year it will launch a new version of Health supported by Apple Intelligence (that is, Apple Inc.'s AI service system), connecting health data, personalized insights, and personalized fitness education content. If Fitness+ integration continues to advance, it is expected to reduce fragmented content investment, allow data collected by Apple Watch to be more effectively translated into daily service experiences on Apple Inc. endpoint devices such as the iPhone, and thereby enhance device stickiness and subscription retention. The catalyst with greater weight for future performance is the high-end product mix upgrade brought by the foldable screen, as well as a new round of iPhone replacement demand driven by the exclusive AI experience Apple Inc. has been planning for years. In the third quarter of Apple Inc.'s fiscal year 2026, iPhone and Services revenue were $54.252 billion and $30.739 billion, respectively, together accounting for about 77.7% of total revenue. The already released iPhone Duo starts at $1,999, features a 7.6-inch inner display, and supports side-by-side operation of two apps, adding a higher-priced product tier for Apple Inc. Its financial transmission logic is: raising average selling price through a higher proportion of higher-priced models, enhancing replacement willingness through new usage scenarios, and then expanding service revenue opportunities through device retention. According to official arrangements, Duo will begin pre-orders on October 16 and go on sale on October 23, and these growth potentials will gradually be tested as actual deliveries proceed. AI also provides Apple Inc. with a new path to extend from hardware sales to recurring service revenue. Apple Inc. has stated in official explanations that some AI features relying on server models will in the future offer paid extended access. This means that AI's commercial contribution can be reflected both in hardware upgrades and in higher usage quotas and recurring service fees. From this it can be inferred that Apple Inc.'s noteworthy new growth combination is "foldable screens enhance hardware value, AI expands functional value and service monetization space"; if the Fitness+ adjustment can help the company concentrate execution resources, its role is closer to improving efficiency for this overall strategy. From the underlying architecture, Apple Inc.'s AI service ecosystem clearly adopts endpoint-cloud collaboration: on-device AI handles tasks suitable for local execution, while Private Cloud Compute (PCC) takes on more complex model requests. Local models are compressed and quantized, and combined with self-developed chips, achieving a balance among latency, memory usage, energy consumption, personal privacy, app collaboration, and endpoint personalization settings; PCC runs larger models through servers equipped with Apple Inc. chips, expanding complex reasoning capabilities. For the expensive foldable-screen iPhone lineup, the Apple Inc. AI ecosystem is expected to become an important product catalyst: the larger display space allows users to view information on one side and interact with Siri on the other, while personal context understanding and cross-app operations further improve multitasking efficiency, thereby enhancing the practical value of the high-priced product. This catalyst comes from the combination of "large-screen workspace + AI task execution"; AI also serves multiple compatible iPhones, and Duo's differentiation lies in presenting these capabilities in a way more suited to parallel operation. On Wall Street, analysts' most optimistic bullish target price for Apple Inc. hovers around $400. The $400 target camp includes former Wedbush senior analyst Dan Ives and TD Cowen's Krish Sankar, implying that in these analysts' view, Apple Inc., with a market value approaching $5 trillion, has about 20% potential upside over the next 12 months. Ives' core bullish logic is that Apple Inc. is expected to become the mass-market application gateway for consumer AI, arguing that Apple Inc.'s roughly 2.5 billion active devices form the foundation for AI distribution, and predicting that about 20% of the global population may use AI through Apple Inc. devices in the coming years. He further predicts that commercialization of AI services and storage features could add about $15 billion in annual service revenue for Apple Inc. in the coming years. TD Cowen's $400 judgment places more emphasis on product pricing power and the support that hardware upgrades provide to profitability, especially pointing out that upward price adjustments for iPad, Mac, and future iPhone models, as well as the 2-nanometer chip upgrade, will help partially absorb cost pressure. It added that foldable screens provide a new reason for high-end replacement, AI enhances the actual use value of devices, and service commercialization extends the revenue contribution cycle of each user. This logic focuses on whether Apple Inc. can, through product differentiation and user stickiness, convert technological upgrades into revenue and profit growth.