It seems impossible for Tim Cook’s legacy as a grand successful CEO of Apple to be in danger. But in recent months, and especially in recent days, the inability has become at least possible.
Recent tremor came when Apple announced that Chief Operations Jeff Williams would retire until the year after 27 years. Just a day earlier, AI’s best CEO, Ruoming Pang, had left to join Meta, and weeks earlier another AI researcher at a high level, Tom Guenther had also left. The image of leadership emigration was formed.
Wider, Apple’s shares decreased by 7.2%in the last year, while S&P is 6.5%and NASDAQ is 12.9%.
These events have scored some of Apple’s most anxious weaknesses in the foreground. First of all: an obviously serious lag from competitors involving AI in products and services. Last year, with Hollywood Fanfare, the company introduced Apple Intelligence, a version of AI, which only Apple, creator of the world’s most convenient products and services, can create. But it doesn’t work that way. Playing on Apple Intelligence so far, the company has a partnership with Openai for some obligations performed by Apple’s virtual assistant, and according to the messages, has been considering an anthropic and partner with or purchasing AI.
For a company of Apple’s scale and growth, the lag of AI’s main competitors is like a lag in competition on the Internet in 2000. AI is a general -purpose technology and these things do not appear very often. The internet was one. So were digital calculations and electricity. They change the world and revolutionize a business landscape for every company.
With this in mind, it becomes clear how Tim Cook can be one of the largest CEOs since 2011 since 2011, but it may not be optimal for the AI era.
As a backdrop, remember how strikingly successful Apple was under Cook. When Steve Jobs made it CEO, the company cost about $ 300 billion. It now costs $ 3.2 trillion – a remarkable sophisticated annual growth rate of 18.4% in 14 years. Few people realize that Cook has created much more wealth for shareholders than jobs.
But now look more closely. Craig Mofet, the founder of the Moffettnathanson research firm, is one of the extremely few Wall Street analysts who have a recommendation for the sale of Apple shares. He is also a chef fan. “By all normal indicators, he had a wild, wild successful term,” says Mofet. But then he examines how this success was achieved. “They have not produced a basic new product beyond possibly the headphones for a decade,” he says. “Apple has done a lot more about the process innovation than there is a product above Tim Cook’s term.”