Apple CEO Tim Cook: 'We’re not in the junk business'

“Apple’s doomed. This is what you hear and read… Apple’s (AAPL) stock price [is] down around 33 percent since its peak about a year ago,” Sam Grobart reports for Bloomberg Businessweek. “None of this rattles Tim Cook. Oh, he’s heard it, of course, but his soft-spoken, deliberate manner in interviews is not cover for how, say, Apple’s share price affects his mood. ‘I don’t feel euphoric on the up, and I don’t slit my wrists when it goes down,’ he says. ‘I have ridden the roller coaster too many times for that.’ When asked about the rise of low-cost manufacturers, he’s equally even-tempered. ‘It happens in every market I’ve seen,’ he says.”

“To Cook, the mobile industry doesn’t race to the bottom, it splits. One part does indeed go cheap, with commoditized products that compete on little more than price. ‘There’s always a large junk part of the market,’ he says. ‘We’re not in the junk business,'” Grobart reports. “The upper end of the industry justifies its higher prices with greater value. ‘There’s a segment of the market that really wants a product that does a lot for them, and I want to compete like crazy for those customers,’ he says. ‘I’m not going to lose sleep over that other market, because it’s just not who we are. Fortunately, both of these markets are so big, and there’s so many people that care and want a great experience from their phone or their tablet, that Apple can have a really good business.'”

Businessweek cover — Photograph by Adam Amengual for *Bloomberg Businessweek*

“While the partnership between the two men was made official last fall, [Jonathan] Ive and [Craig] Federighi — whose desks are a one-minute walk from one another — have been working together for years. ‘I don’t think we ever talked about our roles,’ Ive says. ‘We talked about how can we most effectively extend the collaboration that always existed,'” Grobart reports. “The line against Apple is that its pace of innovation is off, but Ive and Federighi dismiss that. The two are keen to point out not just new features, but also the deep layers of integration that went into each one. Of the 5S’s fingerprint scanner, Ive says, ‘there are so many problems that had to be solved to enable one big idea.’ Without mentioning competitors (Samsung), it’s clear the two executives think some of what passes for innovation is illusory at best. ‘We didn’t start opportunistically with 10 bits of technology that we could try to find a use for to add to our features list,’ Ive says. Federighi jumps in: ‘New? New is easy. Right is hard.'”

MacDailyNews Take: Indeed, some seven years of work went into making Touch ID a reality.

A few more nuggets:

• “We never had an objective to sell a low-cost phone. Our primary objective is to sell a great phone and provide a great experience, and we figured out a way to do it at a lower cost.” – Tim Cook

• “I think it’s even more a two-operating-system world today than it was before. [But] when you look at things like customer satisfaction and usage, you see the gap between Android and iOS being huge.” – Tim Cook

• “Does a unit of market share matter if it’s not being used? For us, it matters that people use our products. We really want to enrich people’s lives, and you can’t enrich somebody’s life if the product is in the drawer. – Tim Cook on the wide gap between the highly-used iOS and the lightly-used Android online

Much more in the full article – highly recommended – here.

MacDailyNews Take: Oh, yes, Tim is nothing like, and learned nothing, from Steve. (sarcasm piled high)

There’s always a large junk part of the market. We’re not in the junk business. – Apple CEO Tim Cook, September 12, 2013

There’s some stuff in our industry that we wouldn’t be proud to ship; that we wouldn’t be proud to recommend to our family and friends. And, we can’t do it; we just can’t ship junk. – Steve Jobs, August 7, 2007

[Updated: 2:22pm EDT with new headline, additional links.]

Apple CEO Tim Cook: ‘We’re not in the junk business’

Related

Previous Post

Next Post

Reader FeedbackCancel reply

Apple Watch X likely to feature a major redesign

Apple co-founder Steve Jobs spent ‘hour after hour’ on product design

Apple Vision Pro killer app: Sports and concerts, totally immersive

Apple TV+ debuts trailer for ‘The Big Cigar,’ new limited series starring André Holland as Black Panther leader Huey P. Newton

Apple’s forthcoming M4 Mac Studio Sounds like an absolute beast

Please help MacDailyNews’ continued operations with your contribution.