Angry investors and bad press has done Apple much damage. Can CEO Cook do anything to pump some pride into what was until recently a mammoth $658 billion-worth corporation?
Five months into his tenure at Apple, Tim Cook invited a select group of Apple’s shareholders at the company’s conference center at 4 Infinite Loop building. The idea was to get those investors to understand the company and its new CEO better – understandably to take a step towards reducing the widespread discussion in the investor community about how weak-willed Apple had grown in the absence of ‘the’ Steve. Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer first treated them to three-quarters of an hour-long presentation, following which they were served three cookies and two cans of Coke as refreshments. Something unheard of happened at Apple that day. When Oppenheimer had played half his part, Cook quietly walked into the room, chose a seat on the last row and listened. Patiently. His iPhone 4S was on silent mode, and while his CFO spoke for 25 minutes in his presence, he did not add a word. When Oppenheimer’s presentation ended, Cook walked up the front and answered questions that investors shot at him, again with great patience. He explained matters beyond what the company’s financials showed, praised Zuckerberg and Bezos, talked about competition, and in a line assured the 15-odd heads in that room that investors in America now have the freshman CEO’s ear; much unlike Jobs who mostly believed that it was below his dignity to give answers to investors and employees. In their few and many years as Apple investors, the shareholders had never believed, seen or heard of a calm Apple CEO. Jobs wouldn’t have bothered to entertain a lot of dozen-odd investors, out on a ‘bus tour’ of Apple’s campus. Cook did. That was a month before the iPad 3’s official release. That summer (in August), Apple became the world’s most valuable public company ever (with an m-cap of $623 billion), beating the previous best of $620 billion set by Microsoft in 1999. Something that Cook had done to Apple in 12 months was making the company different, wealthier and more powerful than Jobs had in the past 14 years.
Cook was all set to blaze a trail in the world of technology. Victory in the patent infringement lawsuit against arch-rival Samsung in end-August and introduction of the iPhone 5 & iOS 6 in the second week of September, saw Apple peak on September 21, 2012. Its m-cap reached $658 billion. But that’s when the dream ended.
The six months that followed (the past half-a-year), earned Cook a bad name. Today, Apple is battling where it used to crush. Disappointing reviews of its new launches - MacBook, Siri, Apple iMap – and some grossly misguided HR strategies (like the hiring of John Browett as Head of Apple’s Retail business and his firing in 9 months flat, and the firing and rehiring of Scott Forstall, the man behind the Siri and iMaps fiascos and one who was responsible for failing to make the iOS 5 and iOS 6 seem upgrades to the previous iOS versions) have weighed heavy on Apple’s stock price.
Then of course, is the fact that Cook did little to stop the drumbeat of negativity about Apple – whether by making ‘impactful’ public appearances or by bringing to life Apple’s faded marketing mojo. It is understood that scaring investors and customers about Apple’s fast drying innovation pipeline is all a matter of ‘wrong and misguided’ print and online reporting. For those who say Apple has nothing beyond the iPhone 5 or iOS 6, pray tell us what Samsung has beyond the Galaxy S4 or what Sony has beyond the Xperia Z or what HTC has beyond the One X or what even Google has beyond a stitched-up, fragmented ecosystem of a low security-walled OS? All tech companies have a secret called a ‘laboratory’. [You bet, Apple can afford one too.
What is not true is that Apple is dying soon. What is, is that even its ads have become too product-centric, while competitors across various product categories where it exists – like Samsung, Nokia, Microsoft, Acer et al – have gone the other way (compare the recent iPhone ad to that of others and you will get the drift). Moving away from consumers towards margins and being focused only on the product is what has primarily got Cook’s peace. In the past six months, his company missed earnings targets twice (that made it three in a row – from Q3, 2012 to Q1, 2013) and it has shed 36.8% of its market value (that has fallen to $415.68 billion, as on March 28, 2013).
Five months into his tenure at Apple, Tim Cook invited a select group of Apple’s shareholders at the company’s conference center at 4 Infinite Loop building. The idea was to get those investors to understand the company and its new CEO better – understandably to take a step towards reducing the widespread discussion in the investor community about how weak-willed Apple had grown in the absence of ‘the’ Steve. Apple CFO Peter Oppenheimer first treated them to three-quarters of an hour-long presentation, following which they were served three cookies and two cans of Coke as refreshments. Something unheard of happened at Apple that day. When Oppenheimer had played half his part, Cook quietly walked into the room, chose a seat on the last row and listened. Patiently. His iPhone 4S was on silent mode, and while his CFO spoke for 25 minutes in his presence, he did not add a word. When Oppenheimer’s presentation ended, Cook walked up the front and answered questions that investors shot at him, again with great patience. He explained matters beyond what the company’s financials showed, praised Zuckerberg and Bezos, talked about competition, and in a line assured the 15-odd heads in that room that investors in America now have the freshman CEO’s ear; much unlike Jobs who mostly believed that it was below his dignity to give answers to investors and employees. In their few and many years as Apple investors, the shareholders had never believed, seen or heard of a calm Apple CEO. Jobs wouldn’t have bothered to entertain a lot of dozen-odd investors, out on a ‘bus tour’ of Apple’s campus. Cook did. That was a month before the iPad 3’s official release. That summer (in August), Apple became the world’s most valuable public company ever (with an m-cap of $623 billion), beating the previous best of $620 billion set by Microsoft in 1999. Something that Cook had done to Apple in 12 months was making the company different, wealthier and more powerful than Jobs had in the past 14 years.
Cook was all set to blaze a trail in the world of technology. Victory in the patent infringement lawsuit against arch-rival Samsung in end-August and introduction of the iPhone 5 & iOS 6 in the second week of September, saw Apple peak on September 21, 2012. Its m-cap reached $658 billion. But that’s when the dream ended.
The six months that followed (the past half-a-year), earned Cook a bad name. Today, Apple is battling where it used to crush. Disappointing reviews of its new launches - MacBook, Siri, Apple iMap – and some grossly misguided HR strategies (like the hiring of John Browett as Head of Apple’s Retail business and his firing in 9 months flat, and the firing and rehiring of Scott Forstall, the man behind the Siri and iMaps fiascos and one who was responsible for failing to make the iOS 5 and iOS 6 seem upgrades to the previous iOS versions) have weighed heavy on Apple’s stock price.
Then of course, is the fact that Cook did little to stop the drumbeat of negativity about Apple – whether by making ‘impactful’ public appearances or by bringing to life Apple’s faded marketing mojo. It is understood that scaring investors and customers about Apple’s fast drying innovation pipeline is all a matter of ‘wrong and misguided’ print and online reporting. For those who say Apple has nothing beyond the iPhone 5 or iOS 6, pray tell us what Samsung has beyond the Galaxy S4 or what Sony has beyond the Xperia Z or what HTC has beyond the One X or what even Google has beyond a stitched-up, fragmented ecosystem of a low security-walled OS? All tech companies have a secret called a ‘laboratory’. [You bet, Apple can afford one too.
What is not true is that Apple is dying soon. What is, is that even its ads have become too product-centric, while competitors across various product categories where it exists – like Samsung, Nokia, Microsoft, Acer et al – have gone the other way (compare the recent iPhone ad to that of others and you will get the drift). Moving away from consumers towards margins and being focused only on the product is what has primarily got Cook’s peace. In the past six months, his company missed earnings targets twice (that made it three in a row – from Q3, 2012 to Q1, 2013) and it has shed 36.8% of its market value (that has fallen to $415.68 billion, as on March 28, 2013).
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