Bank of America Merrill Lynch said Friday that Apple has a huge opportunity to increase its revenues by $100 billion in the long term by entering new product areas, including expanding its presence in health care, exploring the console gaming market and launching a Siri smart home assistant.
"In our opinion, Apple is well positioned to capture share in the video game market using its iOS platform, but also to leverage that more broadly over time to support an experience similar to console gaming," BofAML said in a note to clients. "Further recent hires suggest that the capability of the Apple TV can incorporate console gaming and set-top box all integrated into a single product down the road."
Analyst Wamsi Mohan raised his 12-month price target on Apple to $180 a share from $155. The shares, which are up more than 30 percent this year, closed at $153.95 on Thursday, sporting a market value of more than $800 billion.
Reports have long suggested Apple wants to launch its own streaming TV service. Its Apple TV already offers iOS gaming, though it is considered more casual than gaming consoles such as the Sony PlayStation 4, Microsoft Xbox One and the recent Nintendo Switch.
BofAML also sees a big market for a smart home assistant powered by Siri that could compete with the Amazon Echo and Google Home. "We estimate the potential market at $7.5 billion. To size this, we factor a 5% penetration (attach) into the iPhone installed base of 600 million units. Assuming a sell price of $250 per device, we estimate a $7.5 billion potential market for Apple." Rumors suggest Apple may announce such a device as early as next month's WWDC event.
BofAML addresses the potential for an Apple Car, too, suggesting that Apple has a $1 billion revenue opportunity by 2020 and a $27 billion revenue opportunity by 2025 if it develops and starts selling an autonomous car by 2020 with an average selling price 10 percent greater than that of Tesla's Model S. By 2020, Apple would also need to grab twice the market share that Tesla had in 2012 for this to work. Despite the firm's predictions, rumors that Apple is actually building a car, versus helping partners to do so, seem to be dying down.
The BofAML also sees an upside in virtual reality, which it says will have a total addressable market value of $30 billion in 2020.
Apple doesn't necessarily need to enter the markets, though our guess is that it will dip its toes into new areas at some point. BofAML said that, even if Apple sits still, the markets Apple currently addresses (smartphones, tablets, wearables and desktops/laptops) can generate $550 billion in revenue by 2020.