Apple CEO Tim Cook on Tuesday issued a memo to company staff that discusses the 2019-nCoV coronavirus.
Apple will be doubling the company’s donation to the public healthcare response, Cook announced.
In the memo, Cook explains to employees that “corporate offices and contact centers have reopened across China, and our stores are starting to reopen, but we are experiencing a slower return to normal conditions than we had anticipated.”
Here’s is Cook’s memo to Apple employees, verbatim:
Team,
The response to COVID-19 has touched the lives of so many in the Apple family, and I want to thank everyone for their dedication, empathy, understanding, and care. Today, we more than doubled our donation to support the historic and global health response.
Our paramount concern is with the people who make up Apple’s community of employees, partners, customers, and suppliers in China. I also want to recognize the many people across our teams who have been working around the clock to manage Apple’s global COVID-19 response with diligence and thoughtfulness.
Corporate offices and contact centers have reopened across China, and our stores are starting to reopen, but we are experiencing a slower return to normal conditions than we had anticipated. This afternoon, I shared this update with our community of shareholders and investors to note that we do not expect to meet the revenue guidance we provided for the March quarter. Outside of China, customer demand across our product and service categories has been strong to date and in line with our expectations. Apple is fundamentally strong, and this disruption to our business is only temporary.
Our first priority – now and always – is the health and safety of our employees, supply chain partners, customers, and the communities in which we operate. Our profound gratitude is with those on the front lines of confronting this public health emergency.
Tim
MacDailyNews Note: Currently, in pre-market trading, shares of Apple are off $7.25 (-2.23%) to $317.70.
WOKE Cook contradicted himself by exporting US jobs to a country ruled by a dictatorship.
Absolutely true. Worse, the new products offered by Cook are increasingly discretionary luxury landfill fodder. As I realized this, I trimmed my share of AAPL holdings over the course of the Cook era at Apple.
Did I lose money by hedging my bets? Not at all. Not that I am a huge fan, but MSFT gained more in the last year than AAPL. More diversified company with less risk.
It’s all on Timmy that he decided to goose short-term AAPL valuation with buybacks rather than investing in a much more diverse supply chain and manufacturing footprint. He’s created an unnecessarily risky base for such a cash-flush company.
Now the fundamental question remains: are you buying and investing in accordance with your values? Why or why not? Seems like many here, including me, are less than satisfied with the directions Apple takes on lots of stuff. Yet look how many are ignoring the glaring weaknesses in today’s Apple, acting like religious zealots if anyone questions Apple’s latest business strategies. So while a lot of extreme righties hate everything Cook stands for, their real god is money, and they keep shoveling cash at Cook while blogging away with praise for an orange liar as if the latter idiot in any way improved their investment luck. Both economic traitors can be cut loose as far as I’m concerned. America needs to invest in its cash starved small businesses and individuals, not cash-hoarding multinationals and billionaire executives. You can’t claim to care about American working class people and then support trickle-down by giving money to Cook, who has done practically nothing but outsource all production as fast as possible to China.
One more thought:
Timmy is an unelected bureaucrat. If corporations cared for people, they would be responsive to the needs and desires of the people they claim to care about.
So I ask you: Has Timmy bothered to listen for a nanosecond about your multiyear requests for a 4″ screen iPhone, or for a mid-range headless Mac tower? How about for better worker rights in the nondemocratic countries in which Apple has chosen to do most of their work?
Corporatism is not democracy folks. Unfettered, corporatism (crony capitalism) undermines democracy. You see it more every day. Remember that when you see how the corrupt 2 political parties keep themselves in power … with corporate cash from unaccounted sources.
Mike, you’re welcome to start your own blog to post your essay-length, obsessive rantings, don’t pollute the comments with your attention-seeking fake piety.
Nick: Mike has contributed more facts and provoking ideas here than you. If you don’t want to read, then YOU walk away. That’s how freedom of speech works. Okay?