Apple Intelligence-powered Siri has been delayed by over a year. The primary reasons are Apple's struggles to develop its own AI models and its reluctance to spend heavily. The company's strict privacy stance also limits data collection, making model training difficult. This has kept the advanced Siri features exclusive to a small number of recent iPhone models.

However, this extended timeline now offers a significant upside. More iPhone users will have capable devices when the new Siri finally launches. Since its initial announcement, Apple Intelligence has expanded from just two supported iPhone models to eleven. This broader hardware base means the feature will reach a much larger portion of Apple's customer base from the start.

The delay also allowed for a new partnership. Apple and Google announced that Gemini models will run on Apple's private cloud servers to power future Siri requests. This hybrid approach, combining local and cloud-based processing, could deliver more capable features. When iOS 26.4 arrives this spring, the rollout story will be stronger simply because more people can actually use it.