Apple showcased its latest sci-fi vision on Tuesday by announcing that users of its products may one day be able to control them with brain signals. If achieved, with the help of brain implants, it would mark another huge milestone for the company.
The initiative, aimed at helping only disabled users, at least for now, shows that Apple still has its eye on cutting-edge innovation. But it also highlights the company’s challenge: Much of that innovation isn’t destined for the general public or ready to be a big seller any time soon.
What Apple really needs, according to Wall Street, is something far more mundane: Growth in sales of its all-important iPhone. Nearly three years of largely stagnant revenue from the device is weighing on the tech giant’s shares.
Apple’s stock is down 15% this year, due to a combination of slow growth and the feared impact of President Donald Trump’s trade war.
Apple CEO Tim Cook is racing to come up with a fix for his company’s predicament. But those efforts have been far from successful.
A plan to jumpstart iPhone sales by infusing the latest model with artificial intelligence has failed to have much impact. The company uncharacteristically fumbled on developing the promised software behind many of the most appealing AI features and, in a major embarrassment, had to delay their release until sometime later this year.
In a call with analysts earlier this month, Cook stressed the positive when it comes to the iPhone and artificial intelligence —or Apple Intelligence, under the company’s branding. He said sales during of the latest quarter of the most recent iPhone family, iPhone 16, was higher in countries where Apple Intelligence was offered than in countries where it wasn’t. Still, Apple is currently dependent on partners like OpenAI for bringing the most advanced AI features to the iPhone, which accounts for roughly half of Apple’s revenue.
Last year, Apple had another chance to lift its business when it started selling its Vision Pro augmented reality goggles. The device lets people wearing it seemingly project a movie onto the real world or make them seem like they’re watching an NBA game from the front row. Many reviewers praised Apple’s innovative design, which included letting users see people around them, unlike some goggles from rival companies. But ultimately, the device hasn’t appealed to a broad public because it looks awkward—like something you’d see people wearing on a ski slope—and costs a pricey $3,500.
Other ambitious efforts, like its decade-long, multi-billion dollar project to develop self-driving car technology, fared even worse. Apple pulled the plug on that project in 2024.
Apple’s announcement on Tuesday about making its devices potentially compatible for people who have a disease like ALS or spinal cord injuries is another highly innovative effort. With the project, Apple hopes to partner with companies working on so-called brain computer interfaces, or brain implants, that can understand brain signals. Apple has worked with one of those companies, Synchron, to develop a standard that would let patients control Apple devices without any physical movement.
“This marks a defining moment for human-device interaction. BCI is more than an accessibility tool, it’s a next-generation interface layer,” Dr. Tom Oxley, Synchron’s CEO and cofounder, said in a statement. “Apple is helping to pioneer a new interface paradigm, where brain signals are formally recognized alongside touch, voice and typing.”
For now, only a relative handful of patients have brain computer implants. It’s unclear when any patients will be able to use Apple devices through the new standard.
The most prominent company in the brain implant field is Neuralink, founded by Elon Musk. Its first patient was able to show he could move a cursor with the help of an implant.
Although Musk has pitched brain computer interfaces as something all people could use to amplify their abilities, Apple was more muted on Tuesday. In its statement, it mentioned implants and its initiative only in terms of helping disabled people use its devices, and made no mention of its project ever leading to wide commercial use.
For now, Apple’s iPhone sales growth problem is still waiting to be solved.
This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
