Amazon, Apple and Google made product promises they couldn’t keep in 2024

The trend: Big Tech companies made bold promises about new products and improvements in 2024, but not everyone was able to follow through on their pitches.

• Amazon delayed long-awaited AI improvements to its Alexa voice assistant, including better conversation abilities, to sometime this year. It initially demonstrated the revamped assistant in 2023.
• Apple started promoting a next-gen version of CarPlay in 2022, and its website still states the product will arrive in 2024.
• Google continues to delay deprecation of third-party cookies and now plans to start the process early this year.

Taking time for rollouts: Even for the products that successfully launched in 2024, delays were rampant.

• In December, OpenAI released its Sora video-generation tool, 10 months after its announcement.
• Apple Intelligence’s slow rollout hurt market value and iPhone 16 sales. The AI system still only supports English and won’t have additional languages until April, which could reduce global adoption.

All promise, no product: Perhaps to stay competitive in the generative AI (genAI) race, tech companies are resorting to announcing products that aren’t ready to ship, which can frustrate consumers.

• OpenAI’s Sora announcement in February elicited a flurry of news coverage, but that died out as delays continued.
• Account creation was suspended for days after the release due to heavy traffic, an issue that OpenAI should have prepared for considering the hype surrounding it.

Premature announcements could also stem from investor pressures and a need to validate genAI spending.

• Data center costs are sky high—Amazon spent $22.6 billion on property and equipment in Q3—increasing scrutiny from investors to show progress and innovation.
• Premature announcements might generate media attention and drive up stock prices in the short term, but they could also negatively affect a company’s bottom line, as demonstrated by Apple.

Our take: Pushing launches back can signal stretched resources and conflicting internal priorities. To manage expectations, tech companies should focus on realistic timelines rather than artificial hype.

Investors need to understand that complex products, especially those with genAI infrastructure, take time. Rushed product releases can ultimately hurt both brand reputations and stock prices.

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