BofA says Apple can keep every iPhone and still lose checkout rails

Apple can keep selling every iPhone and still lose the rails that feed Services.

That is the warning Bank of America Securities analyst Wamsi Mohan put in front of investors on Tuesday, Sep 29, 2026, using Meta’s Muse agent as the clearest live case. In a note quoted by Seeking Alpha and carried by 9to5Mac, Mohan wrote: “The risk for Apple is that it can keep every handset sale and still lose discovery, referral, and transaction initiation.”

The point is not that handsets vanish. It is that the agent sits between the user and the merchant. “Whomever the agent chooses becomes the merchant, and whoever owns the agent collects the routing economics that previously accrued to operating systems, search, and app stores,” Mohan wrote, according to Yahoo Finance as cited by 9to5Mac and restated by Investing.com.

Mohan kept his Buy rating and $370 price target and still called Apple an eventual winner of AI at the edge. The note is a structural risk flag, not a rating cut. Apple shares still finished the Sep 29 regular session at $329.40, down $9.00, or 2.66%, from the Sep 28 close of $338.40, as outlets tied the tape to the note without proving it was the only catalyst.

Muse matters here only as the exhibit. Secondaries describe an agent that browses, fills forms, books, and buys, and that can keep working after the app is closed. Mohan’s commerce examples, as reported by 9to5Mac, Investing.com, and Benzinga, include Shopify and Shop Pay, Expedia, and PayPal — the discovery-to-checkout path running through the agent rather than App Store surfaces. Amazon, those same reports say, blocked the agent. That contrast is the frame: partner rails versus platform rails.

On Siri, Mohan’s gap list is specific. Benzinga quotes him saying Siri AI still lacks Muse-level “persistent background tasks, third-party action coverage, or an agent payment rail.” 9to5Mac reports the same three shortfalls. Investing.com adds his cadence line: Apple ships major software annually while agents improve daily — and that Services, silicon, payments, privacy, and Siri teams need to move together for the “economics of user intent.”

Stakes: If agents own discovery, referral, and transaction initiation, Apple can win the handset and still watch App Store–linked Services economics leak to whoever owns the agent — Shopify-style checkout, PayPal rails, Expedia bookings — unless Siri and Apple’s payments stack close the gap on background work and agent checkout.