Tim Cook

With Tim Cook set to receive more than $100M in stock bonuses as he reaches his fifth anniversary as Apple’s CEO today, the Financial Times has assessed the performance of AAPL under his leadership in a series of five charts.

In a ‘good news, bad news’ chart, the FT begins with a Bloomberg chart showing cumulative sales of the iPhone against income from the device as a percentage of total revenue. While analysts have focused on recent year-on-year dips, there’s no arguing with the steady rise in cumulative sales, Apple recently selling its billionth iPhone.

But the overall trend is also for the company to be increasingly dependent on iPhone revenue, making the decline in sales more worrying than it might otherwise be …

Expand
Expanding
Close

The Washington Post this weekend published a very in-depth video/interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook just weeks before Apple is set to unveil its biggest product of the year by far, the iPhone 7. In it, Cook talks about the incredibly important people outside of Apple he turns to for advice at pivotal moments, including Warren Buffett on returning cash to stockholders, Anderson Cooper on coming out, and folks like Bill Clinton and Laurene Powell Jobs on testifying before congress.

He also touches on the future of Apple, such as its Artificial Intelligence and and Augmented/Virtual Reality ambitions…
Expand
Expanding
Close

A FastCo piece based on interviews with CEO Tim Cook and SVPs Eddy Cue and Craig Federighi may be long on commentary and light on quotes, but it does provide a few interesting insights along the way.

Apple’s decision to offer a public beta program for iOS, for example, was in direct response to the Maps debacle …

Expand
Expanding
Close

At WWDC back in June, Apple CEO Tim Cook teased that the company was approaching the $50 billion milestone in money it had paid out to App Store developers. Today, Cook announced on Twitter that Apple has now paid over $50 billion to App Store developers, while also noting that July was a huge month for the platform.

Expand
Expanding
Close

According to the latest data from IDC out today, Apple continued its lead of the worldwide tablet market in Q2 despite a decline in overall sales.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple CEO Tim Cook is reportedly hosting a political fundraiser for Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign next month, according to Buzzfeed. As the report notes, Cook will be hosting the event as a private citizen as Apple doesn’t have a political action committee like other companies, although Apple’s Lisa Jackson will also be in attendance. Jackson serves as the company’s VP of Environment, Policy, and Social Initiatives. While the fundraiser itself isn’t so much surprising for Cook, it does follow a prior political fundraiser hosted by Cook for Republican Speaker of the House Paul Ryan…

Expand
Expanding
Close

Just minutes ago, Apple released its official Q3 2016 earnings and as usual, the earnings release will be followed by a live conference call. Typically, Apple CEO Tim Cook and CFO Luca Maestri give a deeper look into the results, while questions will also be taken from analysts and investors.

In case you missed it, Apple reported $42.4 billion in revenue and $7.8 billion in operating profit. Contributing to those results were sales of  40.3 million iPhones, 9.9 million iPads, and 4.2 million Macs. As usual, Apple did not break out sales of the Apple Watch, which it says is for competitive reasons.

As usual, we’ll have live coverage of Apple’s earnings call in this post. The call will begin at 2PM ET/5PM PT. Tim Cook will likely speak first, followed by Maestri. The Q&A session will round out the call.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Yet again, Apple CEO Tim Cook is in attendance at the Sun Valley media conference in Idaho this year. Cook has attended the event over the past few years, last year keeping close with fellow tech executives including Bill Gates, IBM CEO Ginni Rometty, and Pinterest CEO Ben Silbermann.

Expand
Expanding
Close

According to Nike’s website, the company today has appointed Apple CEO Tim Cook as lead independent director. While it’s unclear exactly what this means at the moment, Cook has been on Nike’s board of directors since 2005.

Expand
Expanding
Close

House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi is not happy with Tim Cook’s fundraiser for House Speaker Paul Ryan today. The San Francisco Chronicle reports that the Democratic Party leader commented when asked about the event this morning that the Apple CEO is being advised poorly:

“Poor Tim. What a nice guy he is, but somebody gave him bad advice,” House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, said at the end of an animated 15-minute phone interview Monday evening. “He probably doesn’t think that much about politics.”

Politico reported the Cook political fundraiser last week, which benefits Paul Ryan as well as other Republican Party members seeking reelection in the House of Representatives.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple may not be playing ball with the Republican Party’s upcoming convention, but CEO Tim Cook is reportedly set to hold a fundraiser for Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan next week. Politico reports that Apple wants to “strengthen its relationships with key Republicans” like Ryan despite its apparent opposition to Donald Trump, the GOP presidential nominee.

Expand
Expanding
Close

It’s Monday, June 13th and Apple’s Worldwide Developers Conference is about to kick off with the company’s opening keynote and press event at 10 AM PT/1 PM ET.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Earlier this week, Apple continued to climb the Fortune 500 ranking to 3rd, and now Glassdoor’s annual CEO ratings have been released with Tim Cook moving towards the top. Last year, Cook barely cracked the top 10 and was ranked 10th, but this year he’s moved up to 8th.

Expand
Expanding
Close

Update: I referred to the rather misleading headline the Guardian had chosen, and Segall has now posted on his own site that “the Guardian chose to give it a click-bait headline that contradicted my point of view.”

Ken Segall, the former Apple ad consultant who coined the iMac name, wrote the copy for the famous ‘Think different’ campaign and authored the book Insanely Simple, says that Apple is beginning to lose touch with its heritage of simplicity. He gave his assessment of Apple’s ‘state of simplicity’ in a piece for the Guardian.

Though Apple’s customers remain fiercely loyal, the natives are getting restless. A growing number of people are sensing that Tim Cook’s Apple isn’t as simple as Steve’s Apple. They see complexity in expanding product lines, confusing product names, and the products themselves.

While the Guardian‘s headline makes the piece seem entire critical, it’s actually very balanced …

Expand
Expanding
Close

[UPDATE: Video embedded below.]

Tim Cook featured at StartupFest this morning, in an interview with Neelie Kroes discussing Apple’s influence in startups and entrepreneurship culture. Cook covered many topics including the role of entrepreneurs and the App Store, the startup climate in Europe, economic optimism, technology in education, Apple Watch and more. We’ve included some snippets of the talk below …

In the interview, Tim Cook says Apple gives entrepreneurs the ability to sell their app instantly worldwide through the App Store. Apple provides technical and marketing assistance to clear the path so the developer can focus on their product. Most young companies should be principally focused on the product; Apple tries to help ease the frictions to fuel more entrepreneurs to do exactly that. Apple is bringing an app development center in Naples to kickstart the app economy in places it hasn’t yet been.

Expand
Expanding
Close

In this week’s top stories we break down the latest iPhone 7 leaks, the new iTunes 12.4 release, Tim Cook’s trip to India & much more. Head below for the usual roundup of handy links to all of this week’s most shared stories:

Expand
Expanding
Close

Apple CEO Tim Cook sat down for an extended interview with NDTV while in India this week and in it discusses the latest on Apple Pay negotiations, bringing Apple retail to India, and discussions with carriers and government officials while visiting the country.

While noting several large investments Apple is announcing in India, including the opening of a new development office that will create 4,000 jobs and a new accelerator program for app developers, Cook also confirmed talks with Indian banks for Apple Pay and much more:

Expand
Expanding
Close

In between announcing a new development office that will create 4,000 jobs in India and meeting with local iOS developers, Apple CEO Tim Cook was spotted visiting a film set before partying with Bollywood celebrities at an event reportedly hosted by Indian actor Shah Rukh Khan this week.

Expand
Expanding
Close