Apple has promised to unveil a series of "groundbreaking updates" during its annual developer event on June 9, but a Citi Research team said Monday that investors weren't getting their hopes up.

Missing from the announcements at Apple's Worldwide Developers Conference next week will be the highly anticipated artificial-intelligence update to Siri. Rollout has been delayed indefinitely and likely will be pushed to the upcoming operating system update cycle, "though the exact timing is still uncertain," the analysts said.

Apple management has been forced to acknowledge the delay. On a call with investors at the start of May, CEO Tim Cook said the company needed "more time to complete our work on these features so they meet our high quality bar." Management previously said that the update could be expected sometime "in the coming year."

This could be contributing to "low investor expectations" ahead of next week's event, Citi wrote on Monday. Analysts at the firm repeatedly have described the delay as a drag on the stock. In March, Citi argued the development could hurt full-year device sales.

Regardless of this stumbling block, the analysts said Monday that Apple is ready to participate in the era of "personal AI server devices," in which models are distilled and integrated directly onto devices.

The firm remains bullish on Apple's competitive positioning, as the maker of a so-called full stack of hardware, software, and services. Another bright spot is the company's 2.35 billion-strong user base, from which Apple can scrape large amounts of data "to optimize user experience."

The analysts expect investors to key on updates to Apple Intelligence, the company's flagship AI assistant. These include expansion into more regions and new partnerships beyond OpenAI, which was announced in 2024.

As expected, details are being kept under wraps the ahead of the event, stoking speculation. The Citi team cited one rumor that Apple is planning to shift to a year-based naming format for its operating systems (meaning the OS to be announced during the event would be dubbed iOS 26, and so on).

The analysts expect Apple to unveil a sweeping user interface redesign, making it "more consistent and simpler" and akin to the OS for Vision Pro, Apple's mixed-reality headset.

These may seem like negligible changes compared to the much-awaited Siri update, but the analysts see them as evidence of Apple's "continued efforts on a more consistent and better integrated ecosystem." Citi affirmed a Buy rating and $240 price target on Apple shares.

Apple stock fell 0.6% to $199.67 in premarket trading Monday. Futures tracking the S&P 500 and Nasdaq Composite were down 0.4% and 0.5%, respectively.