Apple's former CEO John Sculley stated during the Zeta Live conference in New York City on Thursday, that OpenAI represented "the first real competitor" that Apple has had "in many decades."
"AI has not been a particular strength for them," Sculley said of Apple. He also acknowledged the speculation that current Apple CEO Tim Cook might be considering retirement soon, saying that whoever replaces Cook would need to help Apple transition from the apps era to the agentic era.
Sculley, who had recently retired from his role as the co-founder and vice chairman of the marketing tech company Zeta Global to become vice chairman emeritus, said that agentic AI will "help knowledge workers automate the heavy lifting of their workflows." He also said that it will "shift more technology companies to subscription-based models."
READ: OpenAI buys iPhone designer John Ive's startup io (
"When we had apps at the center of everything, it was selling tools, selling products," Sculley added. "When you think of subscription, it's about people paying for something as long as they need it."
Many believe that Apple has fallen behind on some counts when it comes to AI. The company has not provided consistent product updates like its competitors like OpenAI, Google, Amazon, and Meta. It had also experienced setbacks in the rollout of products, and faced class-action lawsuits over the delay in the arrival of a new and improved version of Siri under the umbrella of Apple Intelligence's generative AI features.
READ: Apple faces class-action lawsuits over delayed Siri features (
Adding to the problem was the massive marketing campaign for the new Siri, which led people to upgrade to various iPhone 16 models. In one class-action lawsuit, plaintiffs said that they would never have upgraded to the new iPhone 16 range if Apple had not leveraged false marketing claims surrounding revamped Siri features.
Earlier this year, OpenAI bought iPhone designer Jony Ive's startup io for $6.4 million. Ive said during OpenAI's DevDay conference this week that he hoped the devices his team is working on would address some of the issues that smartphones and tablets have caused since their launch. "He's the one who actually designed and built the iMac, the iPod, the iPhone, and the iPad," Sculley said of Ive. "If there's anyone who is probably going to be able to bring that dimension to the LLM, in this case OpenAI, it's probably going to be Jony Ive, working with Sam Altman."