In his first major public interview since replacing Steve Jobs as CEO, Tim Cook took the stage with Walt Mossberg and Kara Swisher at the tenth annual All Things D conference to talk about the state of Apple. “Apple has gone through a tremendous change,” Walt Mossberg segued into perhaps the most important question of the interview, “How is Apple different with you as the CEO?”
“I learned a lot from Steve,” Cook responded. “It was the saddest day of my life when he passed away. As much as you should see or predict that I really didn’t. It’s time to get on.”
Cook said that he most admired Jobs’ “intense determination” and described him as “laser-focused.” Cook also explained that the most important leadership lesson he learned from Jobs is that ”‘Focus is key’ .. not just in running your company but in your personal life. You can only do certain things well.”
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Everyone has been wondering what Apple will do with its outsized cash reserves — currently at just under $100 billion. Tomorrow the company will hold a conference call to tell the world what that will be.
“Tim Cook, Apple’s CEO, and Peter Oppenheimer, Apple’s CFO, will host a conference call to announce the outcome of the Company’s discussions concerning its cash balance. Apple will not be providing an update on the current quarter nor will any topics be discussed other than cash,” read a release from the company. → Read More
Apple CEO Tim Cook took the stage today at the Goldman Sachs Technology & Internet Conference in San Francisco to talk about Apple’s unbelievable first quarter, as well as the company’s outlook going forward. It’s been hard to avoid the headlines: Apple is red hot right now, as MG recently pointed out that Apple’s $13.1 billion profits in Q1 was equal to the company’s revenues in Q4 2010. One year and one quarter later, and Apple is growing like it’s on steroids. Throw in the fact that Apple now has $97.6 billion in cash and equivalents, and the overall picture is fairly jaw-dropping.
Or, perhaps what’s even more anxiety-producing, at least for Apple’s competitors, is that Tim sat their in conversation and literally sounded shocked by his own words — specifically over how much opportunity he sees for Apple in developing markets. The mobile device market is expected to grow to 1 billion units by 2015, with 25 percent of that share coming from China and Brazil alone. Cook stressed that those two markets in particular have been (and will continue to be) critical for Apple moving forward. → Read More
After months of leaks and speculation, it seems as if Apple is finally ready to unveil its next iPhone. AllThingsD pegs the announcement date as October 4th, which falls in line with most of the previous rumors concerning the next iPhone’s fall rollout.
With Steve Jobs gone, his hand-groomed successor Tim Cook is expected to take over the dog and pony show. Apple’s future likely hinges more on his on-stage presence than just a piece of hardware. → Read More
Tim Cook, new Apple CEO, has sent out the following memo to Apple staff, according to a source at Ars Technica. Cook says he shares “Steve’s optimism for Apple’s bright future,” and that Apple will continue to be “the magical place that it is.”
Whew!
Full text of the letter is below. → Read More
When Apple CEO Steve Jobs announced he was taking another medical leave of absence earlier this year, the talk immediately started. “But what happens when Apple has to release a new product?” “Will it suck?” The truth, of course, is that Apple has a pipeline of products that likely spans years — all based on calls made while Jobs was in charge. And many of those are already in various levels of late-stage development. But what if a new products slips through the cracks? What if interim Apple head Tim Cook greenlights something awful? The Onion explores this possibility today.
Say hello to the new “grotesque” MacBook. → Read More
During the earnings call following Apple’s blockbuster Q1 2011 results, a questions was asked about Apple’s Mac business as it relates to the iPad business. The iPad business, after all, is growing much faster (and just overtook the Apple portable computer business in terms of revenue). So is it affecting the Mac business by eating into it?
“Was there any cannibalization? Honestly, I don’t know for sure. But yes, I think there is some cannibalization,” Apple COO Tim Cook (who is the acting head of Apple while Steve Jobs is on medical leave) said in response. This echoes the thoughts Jobs had last quarter when asked the same basic question. “The iPad is clearly going to affect notebook computers,” Jobs said at the time. → Read More
As anticipated, shares of Apple’s stock took a massive — and I do mean massive — plunge this morning when the stock market opened. How massive? Roughly $20 billion was wiped off of Apple’s market cap instantly as shares fell over 20 points. But almost as remarkable is the rally that Apple has seen since then. Shares are now up about 15 points from their lows this morning and $15 billion of that $20 billion loss has been added back.
Why the rally? Because after the closing bell today, Apple will announce their Q1 2011 earnings — the quarter that includes holiday sales for the company. Pretty much everyone is anticipating a huge quarter for Apple — undoubtedly, their biggest yet. And investors are clearly doing some last-minute jumping on the bandwagon realizing that revenues will offset uncertainty — at least for today. → Read More
As you’ve undoubtedly heard by now, Apple CEO Steve Jobs is taking an indefinite medical leave of absence from the company, while remaining on as CEO. As I’m the guy around these parts who is known for writing about Apple, I figured I’d weigh in on some of the high level ramifications of this. I don’t plan to write about Jobs’ health often, as quite frankly, the idea of going on and on with endless speculation about someone who is clearly quite sick doesn’t appeal to me at all. The same would be true if it were the head of Google, Microsoft, Facebook, etc.
But that’s not to say there’s no story here. Of course there is. Jobs is the head of the most valuable technology company in the world. They’re a public company with many shareholders who have the right to know certain information about the future of that company. And there is no denying that Jobs, perhaps more so than the head of any other company, is extremely important to that future. So what does his absence mean? → Read More
Not surprisingly on Apple’s earnings call today, there were a lot of questions about Apple’s newest product, the iPad. And I do mean a lot — it seems that about half of the questions were about the product. Unfortunately, neither Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer nor COO Tim Cook gave many answers about the product. Their standard line was that there wasn’t enough data yet to draw any conclusions. But Cook did slip in a few interesting statements about the device.
When asked about Apple’s recent decision to delay iPad shipments to Europe, Cook candidly said that U.S. demand for the iPad “has shocked us.” He noted that it’s a good problem to have, and that there are no production problems — Apple simply underestimated how popular the device would be right off the bat. Apple announced that first day sales surpassed 300,000 and that first week sales were past 500,000. But since then, they haven’t said much. Some estimates put sales past 1 million already. → Read More
Apple thinks of itself as a mobile device company. In January at the iPad launch event, Steve Jobs noted that “Apple is the largest mobile devices company in the world now.” And responding to a direct question today at a Goldman Sachs conference, liveblogged by the WSJ, COO Tim Cook reiterated: “Yes, you should definitely look at Apple as a mobile-device company.”
Cook also pointed out that the majority of Apple’s revenues now comes from mobile devices (including laptops) or content for those devices. Indeed, if you look at the breakdown of Apple’s fourth quarter revenues of $15.7 billion, nearly $12 billion of that came from portable Macbooks ($2.8 billion), iPods ($3.4 billion) and iPhones $5.6 billion). And another $1.2 billion came from iTunes. → Read More
At the tail end of Apple’s quarterly earnings conference call today, COO Tim Cook (CEO Steve Jobs, who is taking a medical leave of absence, was not on the call) noted that 17 million iPhones have been sold to date. When he was asked about the rising competition from Android, Blackberry, and Palm, Cook made an oblique threat:
We approach this business as a software platform business. We are watching the landscape. We like competition as long as they don’t rip off our IP. And if they do, we will go after anyone who does.
San Francisco, CA
