Citi revamps Apple’s stock price target for the rest of 2026

On June 25, Apple told the market it was raising prices on MacBooks, iPads, and other devices to cover the cost of a global memory chip shortage.

The stock fell sharply that day, wiping out everything it had gained year to date. For a company that had been on a strong run, it was a rough afternoon.

Three weeks later, Apple shares were trading at new all-time highs. And on July 13, Citi analyst Asiya Merchant raised her price target on the stock to $365 from $315, maintaining a buy rating and telling clients the company still has roughly 16% more upside from here, according to Barchart.

What Citi’s analyst said on Apple stock and what she’s actually betting on

Merchant’s thesis isn’t complicated. The smartphone and PC markets are in rough shape, likely down a mid- to high-teens percent in 2026. Apple is gaining ground anyway. That gap between where the market is going and where Apple is going is what she’s paying for.

According to her note, Apple is expected to reach a record smartphone market share of around 25% this year, up about two percentage points from where it was, Investing.com reported.

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The company is doing this through design-driven demand, strong mid-range positioning through promotions and subsidies, and an ecosystem that keeps people from switching.

As TheStreet reported, Apple guided gross margins to 47.5% to 48.5% for the June quarter despite rising memory costs, signaling that its pricing power is holding. Merchant sees the June price increases on Macs and iPads not as a red flag, but as further evidence of that strength.

Merchant isn’t counting on Apple Intelligence to push people to upgrade. That story hasn’t really materialized yet, and she doesn’t expect it to drive a meaningful hardware cycle. Yet she thinks a smarter Siri keeps people inside the Apple ecosystem longer, and people who stay in the ecosystem tend to spend more on subscriptions.

That’s the services angle, and it’s where Apple actually generates much of its profitability.

How Apple is winning while the device market shrinks

Apple’s PC business put up 10.1% growth in the second quarter of 2026 in a market that was going the other way. That kind of performance in a down market comes from a few structural advantages the company has built up over years.

Apple’s supply chain is a big part of what makes this work. Most of its competitors buy memory on the spot market, so when prices spike, their costs spike with them and margins take the hit. Apple operates differently. It has long-term supplier agreements, tightly controlled hardware specs, and a customer base that’s used to paying more and tends to stay anyway. That’s why it could raise prices on MacBooks and iPads in June and still be trading at all-time highs three weeks later.