“Apple Inc. is shaking up leadership and reordering priorities across its services, artificial intelligence, hardware and retail divisions as it works to reduce the company’s reliance on iPhone sales.,” Tripp Mickle reports for The Wall Street Journal. “The changes, which can be traced back to last year, have included high-profile hires, noteworthy departures, meaningful promotions and consequential restructurings.They have rattled rank-and-file employees unaccustomed to frequent leadership changes and led Apple to put several projects on hold while new managers are given a chance to reassess priorities, according to people familiar with the matter.”
“The primary reasons for the shifts vary by division. But collectively, they reflect Apple’s efforts to transition from an iPhone-driven company into one where growth flows from services and potentially transformative technologies,” Mickle reports. “Leadership moves of the past few months include promoting artificial intelligence chief John Giannandrea to the executive team; replacing departing retail chief Angela Ahrendts with head of human resources Deirdre O’Brien; and pushing out top Siri voice-assistant executive Bill Stasior. Apple has also trimmed 200 staffers from its autonomous-vehicle project, and is redirecting much of the engineering resources in its services business, led by Eddy Cue, into efforts around Hollywood programming.”
“Apple has said it aims to pass 500 million paid subscriptions across its platform by 2020, up from 360 million now. To help reach the goal, Apple is spending more than $1 billion to create original shows this year starring Hollywood A-listers,” Mickle reports. “It has considered bundling video into a monthly subscription offering that would also include cloud storage, according to people familiar with the plans. The company also is in talks with major newspapers about offering a news service that would cost $10 a month. It has discussed bundling those services together into a single subscription along with iCloud storage for photos and files, a person familiar with the plan said.”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Good luck, everyone, and bring on a temptingly-priced “Apple Prime!”
MacDailyNews Note: Today is Washington’s Birthday in the U.S.A., a federal holiday and, as such, the U.S. markets are closed for the day. We will resume our normal posting schedule tomorrow.
Washington’s Farewell Address, September 19, 1796
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Apple to hold special media event on March 25th – February 12, 2019
Imagining an Apple All Access plan: What if Apple offered iPhone, iCloud, Apple Music, and more all for a single monthly fee? – August 29, 2018
A bundled media subscription would be good news for Apple users and for Apple itself – June 29, 2018
Apple reportedly considering subscription bundle of Apple Music, News and original video content – June 28, 2018
Apple is building a media platform like we’ve never seen before – June 27, 2018
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Apple’s next $10 billion frontier is content creation – June 25, 2018
Apple intends to beat Netflix on price with standalone subscription to original content – June 19, 2018
Washington’s Birthday is a United States federal holiday celebrated on the third Monday of February in honor of George Washington, the first President of the United States, who was actually born on February 22, 1732.
Apparently too little too late. The long term damage has already been done and the main exec shakeup (CEO position), is yet to happen.
😡
Do love the use of that nebulous word ‘apparently’ which equally apparently was used to give a sniff of authority or inside knowledge when there is actually absolutely none evidenced in the post to support it at all. Let’s just stick to opinion instead.
In terms of your ‘opinion’ however I tend to agree up to a degree, it is rather funny to see the Captain re arranging the percieved passengers onboard to suit his whims when it’s mostly him at the helm who can’t see the damn Ice bergs. Just think the idea that it’s re arranging deck chairs on a doomed ship is something of an exaggeration. Keep doing it for another 5 years mind and the lifeboats might indeed become scarce resources. Poor leaders seeking scapegoats especially belatedly doesn’t impress me but that’s merely my opinion… no apparent about it.
Mr Spy, while you are entitled to your opinion, this one is idiotic
And who would satisfy you as Apple’s new CEO? Who can “truly replace” Steve? You have any good ideas?
@CEO Position
How about your mama, troll!
🖕
Quirky fact about Washington’s birthday.
George Washington was born on either Feb. 11, 1731 or Feb. 22, 1732 depending on which calendar you consult.
https://www.livescience.com/33022-when-is-george-washingtons-real-birthday.html
It seems that the move to “services and transformative technologies” has caused major damage to the hardware and operating systems of Apple. Very sadly neglected areas. Apple just ain’t what it used to be. Maybe someone will come along and do the job they used to do.
One can live in hope I guess. Cook clearly foes t look in the mirror much or if he does he clearly doesn’t see what we do.
Same applies to you Mr. Spy
Of course Apple isn’t what it used to be. If it were, it would be disaster.. a failure. Things change over time. Companies (and customers) move and morph in different directions. From that perspective, is Apple really doing THAT bad?
@Ain’t what it used to be
Under Tim Cook, Apple sucks ass. Reputation = gone. Quality = gone. Updated products = non existent. Value = declined. Prices = out of earth’s atmosphere.
Cook has overstayed his position by 7-years.
Yet not a single point (opinion) you made can be corroborated by facts .
As a matter of fact it quite the opposite in ‘most’ areas !
Cant argue againts real Numbers and offical Polls !
Then go get an ASSus phone! Bye!
Chances are they will produce even more of left leaning Hollyweird content that might fit a limited audience, but will fall short of making headways for a global audience.
The other pitfall is failure to market content across their entire market, and not just the US and UK. The state of TV shows and series in iTunes across Europe and global markets is a good indication of what they are up against.
Even if they will be able to market their own produced content, that alone will make the service non-compelling unless they provide a full range of content like other services do.
In Europe you also see increasing regulatory demand for European and local language content, where a certain percentage of the content offered must fall in this category.
Europe has about 225 indigenous languages, and the largest first languages are in this order: Russian, German, French, English, Spanish, Polish, Ukrainian, Romanian and Dutch.
Interesting you post Washington’s farewell address, where he warned against having political parties. And what do we have today? Two political parties that all but shut out participation by all the others, and they both act as organized prostitution houses by which politicians can sell their asses to Wall Street for bribes to keep the 1% in control of all aspects of society and manipulating the rest of us. May we see Washington’s wisdom and burn both the Republican and Democratic parties down.
Geez that could have been said this side of the pond too.
Pericles was once asked what he thought of solons. He answered they were not born but were excreted.
The Address also admonishes us against weakening the balance of powers in the branches of government. Too late for that, apparently.
Bingo. Again, a consequence of having two major parties controlling everything, leading to a discussion of which party controls which branches of government – if not all three.
The best thing about slumping iPhone sales and smartphone saturation throughout the world, is that perhaps Apple will put some people back in the Mac marketplace and come out with something new more often than every 5+ years!
I hope so, but not sure what there is about this news that gives any more hope in that regard than we have now.
“led by Eddy Cue, into efforts around Hollywood programming.”
There you have it. The final plunge into oblivion.
Sell. Sell. Sell. AAPL
Yes gave me a manic laugh too. Maybe we are all doomed after all if Cook sees him as the great saviour.
You should sell all your Apple devices, delete all software, sell AAPL and get in the android herd, same for Mr. Spy, and stop posting on Mac sites
The only executive shakeup I am interested in is thank you Tim, goodbye…
It will never happen
And exactly who would satisfy you as Apple’s new CEO? Who would do SOOO much better than Cook is now? Who can “truly replace” Steve? You have any good ideas? Thank you. Goodbye
It’s not about who can replace Steve Jobs. There’s a wide chasm between where Steve Jobs was and where Tim Cook is. Apple had a really good start under John Sculley – not the visionary that Steve Jobs was, but he made Jobs’ vision a success. Can we really say the same thing about Tim Cook? I think not.
Apple is a GOOFY company… 127,000 employees and you can’t find enough leaders and engineers to cover all your drivers…. maybe you should stop hiring all the green and social media warriors and get back to basics, Tim….just sayin.
Told you, Cook is ruthless. It’s always everybody else’s fault, but never his, never….
And, is it true that Apple was too dependent on the phone business? And since when?
Wow, I was too dumb to even realize it!
And now into the subscription-based Holywood B movie business, and headed by Eddie Q?
Interesting….
Services driven company. @%$&#!!!
Come up with a product FIRST, then build your company around it!
Anything with the goofy Eddie Deezen, err Eddie Haskell, err Eddy Cue is doomed to inebriated failure.
As a big investor in AAPL, I voted every single board of director and CEO OUT. If you invest, you can give your vote as well. Its time to vote out these people and hold them accountable for neglecting Apple and riding the Job train too long. Tim Cook’s leadership is terrible. His execution strategies are WAY too long for a company of this size and with this amount of revenue. The BOD clearly just get together and smile at each other without holding Apple’s leadership accountable, so they must GO! Time has had more than enough time to ‘figure it out’ and clearly he is lost. He doesn’t even understand how to lead, and not follow (see Beats acquisition). Less than 50 hardware sku’s, and many of them are so out of date stale (at crazy high prices) that I wonder what the leadership is actually doing on a daily basis. If you are an investor, please help send a message to replace them all.. maybe they might start paying attention to their customers.. their loyal customers.. ya know, the ones who give them the revenue they boast about.
7th, exactly. The iPhone has been spewing money for a decade. Apple leadership has only rode the wave, and as we see, the whole team wants to ride it straight into the ground. They’ve been completely blinded by IOS’s success. So much so that they think the other BU’s are useless. If their business was squeezing every last penny out of a hit, then they’re doing great. But the hit’s are rare, and once they fade its business as usual. Leadership is supposed to ensure that there is a business left. Apple has abandoned leadership in every other business that it is in: Laptops, Desktop, and Software. None of the LT seem to understand that they make working machines, for working people. Maybe, because for a while, they were wildly successful at making expensive fashion items. It may take a bit, but someone else will make incredibly well made, powerful tools, and the world will beat a path to their door.