Bloomberg’s Mark Garman reported yesterday that Apple’s new Siri initiative was originally scheduled to start rolling out in iOS 26.4, but is facing internal delays. Gurman suggested the feature could start arriving in iOS 26.5 and later releases later this year.
This report appears to have shaken investor confidence, and Apple stock plummeted today. In response, CNBC’s Steve Kobach said Apple has confirmed to him that it’s on track to launch a new version of Siri this year, essentially reaffirming what the company has been publicly promising all along.
To be clear, this doesn’t negate Bloomberg’s report that Siri’s internal work is behind schedule. We have not publicly commented on these claims, positive or negative.
Apple’s new promise to CNBC reiterates promises the company has already made publicly several times. The company has been telling customers since last year to expect the long-promised but delayed Siri feature (first announced during WWDC in 2024) to be available to customers sometime in 2026.
These features include providing personal context to Siri, support for rich in-app actions, and on-screen recognition that allows users to seamlessly ask iPhone’s voice assistant about what they’re looking at and take relevant, contextual actions.
Although the release schedule was “2026,” many sources indicate that Apple intended to eventually roll out these features in iOS 26.4. A Bloomberg report makes clear that this goal is unlikely to be achieved.
These are the first Siri features supported behind the scenes by Google Gemini models as a result of the partnership Apple and Google announced earlier this year.
With iOS 27, Apple is expected to get even more ambitious, with a new Siri chatbot experience that leverages an underlying model based on the latest and greatest version of Google Gemini.
But if the more primitive ones are behind schedule, chances are the iOS 27 ones will be as well. In a rapidly changing market like artificial intelligence, investor confidence depends on Apple catching up as quickly as possible.
