“Five years ago today, Steve Jobs resigned as the CEO of Apple, passing the torch to his longtime deputy Tim Cook,” Dan Frommer reports for Recode. “(Jobs died less than three months later.)”
“Since then, Cook has presided over Apple’s continued meteoric rise — and its first speed bumps,” Frommer reports. “Under Cook, Apple has built its biggest business — by far. The company he inherited from Jobs was just about to pass $100 billion in annual (fiscal 2011) revenue and $25 billion in profit. By fiscal 2015, it would more than double, to $234 billion in revenue and $53 billion in profit.”
Frommer reports, “This summer, Apple shipped its billionth iPhone — not bad for a business that didn’t exist a decade ago.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: In those five years, Apple’s headcount has more than doubled. That’s a lot to absorb with very little outward appearance of growing pains.
SEE ALSO:
Tim Cook set to receive over $100 million on 5th anniversary as Apple CEO – August 24, 2016
Rating Tim Cook’s first five years as Apple CEO – August 24, 2016
Apple CEO Cook has remained faithful to Steve Jobs’ legacy – now, can he transcend it? – August 23, 2016
Jim Cramer: Apple CEO Tim Cook ‘gets very little credit’ – August 23, 2016
Tim Cook: Five years as Apple’s CEO – August 22, 2016
Woz on Tim Cook’s first 5 years as Apple CEO: ‘I am very happy with the way Apple is going’ – August 19, 2016
Excellent article. Graphs are very insightful.
My takeaways:
Chart 1: Cook isn’t doing a good job smoothing out the business cycle. Having more events besides the mega iPhone rollout could help.
Despite growing revenue, profits for the last 5 years are shockingly flat. Where is all the money going???
Chart 2: YOY revenue growth shows a very troubling trend. 2016 so far has been a disaster at a time when the industry and economy are actually humming along fine.
Chart 3: iPhone shipment overall trend will be fine if Apple delivers an improved product this autumn. If not, then this would be a serious blow since Apple now is first and foremost dependent on iPhones for cash flow.
Chart 4: Wall Street hasn’t been impressed with stock buybacks, and the last two years have seen eroding confidence since the iPhone 6 boom. New product would help.
Cart 5: Ah ha, this is where all the money is going. Presumably most of these are retail associates, because product development has been shockingly slow. No increase in product numbers with one exception: the Apple Watch, which Cook must be very proud of since it appears in financials buried in the “Other” category. Concerned that Apple is getting too fat and corporate, nowhere near as agile as they used to be.
I am not sure, if the new CEO would be a great visionary for Apple who would build a great game changer products for Apple. However, there are many critics and negative articles about Tim Cook as a CEO. The Apple boards need to take closer look about this matter. With Tim Cook in the reign, AAPL is forever undervalued because big men do not like TC.
The writer must have missed Apple’s earlier “speed bumps” (a term Steve himself used for one of them).
Strong demand for Samsung’s Galaxy Note 7 tests supply chain
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-samsung-elec-smartphones-idUSKCN10Y2HJ