Fitness+ business streamlining, $1999 foldable screen and AI strategy take the lead! Apple (AAPL.US) is brewing a new round of strong growth

According to Zhitong Finance APP, American consumer electronics giant Apple Inc. (AAPL.US), while reassessing the future of its Fitness+ fitness subscription service, has cut a portion of employees in that division, signaling a potential shift in development focus for the online fitness subscription platform. This adjustment to Fitness+ can be seen as a major signal that Apple is optimizing resource allocation and its services business portfolio, aiming to accelerate a pivot in performance growth toward expensive foldable iPhones and Apple AI strategy—one of its core growth themes for the future.

Media reports indicate that this round of layoffs involved a minority of employees in the audio business, with the specifics of cost savings and budget reallocation yet to be disclosed. More valuable, however, is the possible deeper integration of fitness content with the Health app: Apple has already announced that it will launch a new version of Health supported by Apple Intelligence (Apple's AI service system) this year, connecting health data, personalized insights, and individualized fitness education. If the Fitness+ integration continues, it could reduce fragmented content investments and enable data collected by Apple Watch to be more effectively converted into everyday service experiences on iPhone and other Apple endpoint devices, thereby increasing device stickiness and subscription retention.

For future performance, the critical strong growth drivers will undoubtedly stem from the high-end product structure upgrade brought by the expensive foldable iPhones and the new round of replacement demand driven by the device-side + cloud AI experience.

The already released iPhone Duo, starting at $1,999, features a 7.6-inch inner display and supports dual-app side-by-side operation, undeniably adding a new, higher price tier to Apple’s product lineup. For foldable displays, Apple's AI system can leverage the expanded screen real estate, allowing users to view materials on one side while efficiently interacting with Siri AI, Apple’s super voice assistant, on the other. This enhances personal contextual understanding and cross-app operations, further improving multitasking efficiency and thus the practical value of these premium products.

Fitness Subscription Faces Adjustments; New iPhone Product Line and AI Strategy Attract Market Attention

Media outlets, citing sources, reported that Apple is considering a strategic overhaul of its Fitness+ subscription service. According to these sources, while Apple is reassessing the future of Fitness+, it has cut part of the related staff, indicating a possible change in the platform's development priorities.

The layoffs implemented last week mainly affected staffers in the Fitness+ audio division, including content for “Time to Walk” and “Time to Run,” which users can listen to on their Apple Watch without watching a video.

Apple Inc. (AAPL.US) shares fell 0.2% in after-hours trading on Monday. Over the past week, Apple’s stock price rose 1.2%, during a period that also saw the heavy release of brand new iPhone 18 Pro and the foldable iPhone models.

Apple will not cancel these audio offerings, but media reports indicate that the frequency of new content releases is expected to decrease. Internally, the company is said to regard the latest layoffs as a potential starting point for broader cost-cutting measures and Fitness+ adjustments in the coming months or even years.

Apple has been reassessing Fitness+ since earlier this year; the service faces strong competition from AI-based fitness platforms like Peloton.

A likely direction is to integrate Fitness+ more deeply into Apple’s revamped Health app. Apple is preparing a major upgrade to the Health app, which will include video content explaining health topics and personal benchmark metrics.

Meanwhile, Apple's latest iPhone lineup—including the all-new iPhone Duo—has become a focus for investors and analysts following its launch. The Duo marks Apple's entry into the foldable smartphone market and is positioned as an important new product form rather than a temporary experiment.

As a result, the market is closely watching early reactions for signals about Duo’s demand and Apple’s overall iPhone strategy. Wall Street’s seasoned analysts are also actively assessing whether this new form factor can spark a new replacement cycle for Apple’s most important product, especially as the company continues expanding Apple Intelligence and AI features.

On the Stocktwits platform, retail investor sentiment toward Apple Inc. (AAPL.US) stock and fundamental growth declined last week, sitting in “bearish” territory as of Monday morning. However, Apple’s stock price has jumped 23.3% since the start of this year.

Fitness+ Adjustments Optimize Apple's Internal Resource Allocation; Foldable Devices and AI Redraw Apple’s Growth Trajectory

This adjustment to Fitness+ is regarded as a signal of Apple's efforts to optimize resource allocation and service combinations, while support for the foldable and AI strategies is mainly reflected in organizational efficiency and the increasing synergy of Apple's consumer electronics ecosystem.

Apple recently announced that it will launch a new version of Health supported by Apple Intelligence (Apple's AI service system) within the year, connecting health data, personalized insights, and individualized fitness education. Should the Fitness+ integration continue, it could cut down on fragmented content investments and enable data from Apple Watch to transition more effectively into daily service experiences on iPhone and other Apple endpoints, thus increasing device stickiness and subscription retention.

The most significant growth catalysts for the future are expected to come from the upgrade in high-end product structure driven by foldable devices and a new wave of iPhone replacement demand sparked by Apple's exclusive AI experience, which has been in the works for years.

In the third quarter of Apple’s fiscal year 2026, iPhone and services business revenues reached $54.252 billion and $30.739 billion respectively, accounting for about 77.7% of total revenue. The newly released iPhone Duo starts at $1,999, sports a 7.6-inch internal screen, and allows two apps to operate side by side—creating a higher-priced product tier for Apple. The financial logic is: raise the average selling price by increasing the share of premium models, stimulate replacement demand by introducing new usage scenarios, and enlarge service revenue opportunities through device retention. According to the official timeline, the Duo will be available for pre-order on October 16 and will go on sale on October 23, so these growth prospects will be tested with actual deliveries.

AI also provides Apple with a new path to extend from hardware sales to ongoing service revenues. Apple has stated in its official documentation that some AI features relying on server models will offer paid extended access in the future. This means AI can generate commercial value through both hardware upgrades and higher usage quotas as well as ongoing service fees. Accordingly, Apple's new growth combination worth attention is “foldable screens boost hardware value, AI expands functionality and monetization space for services”; if Fitness+ adjustments help focus executional resources, their effect is more about enhancing the efficiency of this overall strategy.

From an underlying architecture perspective, Apple’s AI service ecosystem clearly adopts device-side and cloud-side cooperation: on-device AI handles tasks suitable for local processing, while Private Cloud Compute (PCC) covers more complex model requests.

Local models are compressed and quantized, combined with custom chips, striking a balance among latency, memory usage, energy consumption, personal privacy, app collaboration, and device-level personalization; PCC uses servers equipped with Apple chips to run larger models, expanding complex inference capabilities.

For the expensive foldable iPhone series, the Apple AI ecosystem is expected to be a key product catalyst: a larger display allows users to view materials on one side while interacting with Siri on the other, with enhanced personal context understanding and cross-app operation further boosting multitasking efficiency—thus enhancing the practical value of high-priced products. This catalyst comes from the “large-screen workspace + AI task execution” combination; with AI supporting multiple compatible iPhones, Duo’s differentiation lies in presenting these capabilities in a way that's more suitable for parallel operation.

On Wall Street, the most bullish analyst targets for Apple sit around $400 per share, with the $400 camp including former Wedbush senior analyst Dan Ives and TD Cowen’s Krish Sankar, implying a roughly 20% upside in Apple's market value—which currently sits near $5 trillion—over the next 12 months in their view. Ives’ core bullish thesis is that Apple is poised to become the mass-market gateway for consumer-grade AI, as its approximately 2.5 billion active devices provide the foundation for broad AI distribution, and he estimates that about 20% of the global population could use AI through Apple devices in coming years. He further forecasts that the commercialization of AI services and storage functions could add around $15 billion in annual service revenue to Apple over the next few years.

TD Cowen’s $400 projection focuses more on product pricing power and the support that hardware upgrades provide for profitability, specifically noting pricing adjustments in iPad, Mac, and future iPhone lines—along with the 2nm chip upgrade—which will help offset some cost pressures. Their analysis adds that foldable devices supply a new high-end reason for users to upgrade, AI boosts the actual utility of devices, and the monetization of services extends each user’s revenue contribution cycle. This approach centers on whether Apple can convert technical upgrades into revenue and profit growth by leveraging differentiated products and strong user stickiness.