> How late do you think Apple can come to that party and still wind up winning in the end?

In my view Apple is positioning themselves (once more) to win without the need of competing on fair grounds. They are late to this party, but their biggest asset is the control over the data and spending of their users.

The users WANT to use those services, and Apple is not ready to offer anything. But as long as they can be the "broker" between the user and such services (and most of all the deciding party!), they can sell the consumption of their entire userbase for revenue-share to the service-providers.

Their biggest risk (beside of stock-market impacts) is, that Apple users start to engage directly with such services without Apple being an intermediary party (using a browser or another device).

So their highest priority will be to keep the user entertained so they can continue profiting from their consumption until they themselves have arrived at the party.

Once they have arrived, they will start diverting profitable AI-tasks from 3rd parties back to their own services, leaving unprofitable ones to the then-integrated 3rd party providers