Apple CEO Tim Cook is fulfilling another Steve Jobs vision

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Apple co-founder Steve Jobs, who died in 2011, was a hardcore act to check out. But Tim Cook appears to be doing so well at it that his eventual successor could also have big shoes to fill.

Initially regarded as a mere caretaker for the iconic franchise that Jobs built before his 2011 death, Cook has forged his own distinctive legacy. He marked his ninth anniversary as Apple’s CEO Monday -- the same day the business split its stock for the next time during his reign.

Grooming Cook as heir apparent was “among Steve Jobs’ greatest accomplishments that is vastly underappreciated,” said long-time Apple analyst Gene Munster, who is now managing partner of Loup Ventures.

The upcoming four-for-one stock split, a move which has no effect on share price but often spurs investor enthusiasm, is one way of measuring Apple's success under Cook. The company was worth slightly below $400 billion when Cook the helm; it's worth five times a lot more than that today, and has just become the first U.S. company to boast market value of $2 trillion. Its share performance has easily eclipsed the benchmark S&P 500, which has roughly tripled in value during the past nine years.

But it hasn't been easy. Among the challenges Cook has faced: a slowdown in iPhone sales as smartphones matured, a showdown with the FBI over user privacy, a U.S. trade war with China that threatened to force up iPhone prices and today a pandemic which has closed a lot of Apple's retail stores and sunk the economy right into a deep recession.

Cook, 59, in addition has struck out in into novel territory. Apple now pays a quarterly dividend, a step Jobs resisted partly because he associated shareholder payments with stodgy companies which were past their prime. Cook also used his powerful perch to be an outspoken advocate for civil rights and renewable energy, and on a personal level arrived as the first openly gay CEO of a lot of money 500 company in 2014.

Apple declined to create Cook designed for an interview. Nonetheless it did point to 2009 comments Cook designed to financial analysts when he was running the business while Jobs battled pancreatic cancer.

Asked what the business might appear to be under his management, Cook said that Apple needs “to possess and control the principal technologies behind the products we make." It has doubled down on that commitment, learning to be a major chip producer so that you can supply both iPhones and Macs. He added that Apple would resist exploring most projects “in order that we can really focus on the few that are truly important and meaningful to us."

That laser focus has served Apple well. At the same time, though, under Cook's stewardship, Apple has largely didn't come up with breakthrough successors to the iPhone. Its smartwatch and wireless ear buds have emerged as market leaders, however, not game changers.

Cook and other executives have dropped hints that Apple wants make a big splash in the field of augmented reality, which uses phone screens or high-tech eyewear to paint digital images into the real life. Apple has yet to provide, although neither have other companies that have hyped the technology.

Apple also remains a laggard in artificial intelligence, particularly in the increasingly important market for voice-activated digital assistants. Although Apple's Siri is trusted on Apple devices, Amazon's Alexa and Google''s digital assistant have made major inroads in assisting persons manage their lives, particularly in homes and offices.

Apple also offers stumbled several times under Cook's leadership.

In 2017, it alienated customers by deliberately but quietly slowing the performance of older iPhones via a software update, ostensibly to spare the life span of aging batteries. Many consumers, though, viewed it as a ploy to improve sales of newer and more costly iPhones. Amid the furor, Apple offered to replace aging batteries at a steep discount; later it paid $500 million to stay a class-action lawsuit over the problem.

Apple in addition has faced government investigations into its aggressive efforts to reduce its corporate taxes and complaints that it has abused control of its iphone app store to charge excessive costs and stifle competition to its digital services. On the tax front, a court ruled in July that Apple did nothing wrong.

Cook has turned the software store in to the cornerstone of a services division that he attempt to expand four years ago. At the time, it was growing clear that sales of the iPhone -- Apple’s biggest money maker -- were destined to decelerate as innovations grew sparse and consumers kept their old devices for longer.

To greatly help offset that trend, Cook began to emphasize recurring income from app commission, warranty programs and streaming subscriptions to music, video, games and news sold for the more 1.5 billion devices already running on the company’s software.

Apple’s services division now generates $50 billion in annual revenue, more than all but 65 companies in the Fortune 500. Ives estimates Apple’s services division by itself will probably be worth about $750 billion -- a comparable as Facebook currently is in its entirety.

That division could possibly be worth a lot more now had Cook done something many analysts believe Apple must have done at least five years ago by dipping right into a hoard of cash that at one point surpassed $260 billion to buy Netflix or a significant movie studio to fuel its video streaming ambitions.

Buying Netflix appeared like within the realm of probability five years back when the video streaming service was valued at around $40 billion. Given that Netflix is worth a lot more than $200 billion today, that idea appears off the table, even for a company with Apple's vast resources.
Source: https://japantoday.com

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