There have been Android powered cameras before so I'm not sure stuffing the guts of a phone in a camera would necessarily be a big change. What I could envision would be Apple's marketing might, if they put their full force behind it, could reignite consumer demand for dedicated camera hardware while at the same time positioning an iPhone or iPad as a companion device. Take the picture on the camera, use an iPad with seamless access to the images for post editing, sharing, and so on. Have an app on the phone/tablet so that it's connected live to the camera so that as soon as you take a picture on the camera it gets uploaded & backed up to your iCloud account and then you could use any Apple device (Mac/phone/tablet) to access the images. If the haven't already, an Apple assistant device could be then used as a photo display frame (like the Google/Nest Hubs and Amazon's video devices). Take a picture while you're on vacation with your Apple Sony branded mirrorless camera, do nothing else, when you get home your vacation photos are on display on your family photo frame when you walk in the door and all of them are backed up to the cloud; whip out your iPhone to share them with friends/family or get on your iPad to do some editing.
Yeah, I know, these days most modern cameras offer some type of wi-fi connections but it really isn't a seamless process. With a vertical integration into Apple's ecosystem they really could make a huge change to the consumer photographer market.