Apple: 10 key takeaways from CEO Tim Cook's latest interview

Tim Cook will complete 5 years as the head of Apple on 24 August. It was in 2011, that Steve Jobs handed over the reins of Apple to Cook. Just as Cook completes half a decade as CEO of Apple, the company has also managed to sell its billionth iPhone. The Wall Street Journal  had a detailed interaction with Cook.

On the slowing smartphone market Around two-thirds of Apple’s revenues come from the iPhone, which is a market segment currently witnessing a plateau in its growth. Cook doesn’t seem troubled by that fact. In fact he calls it a privilege rather than a problem. Compared to PC sales that are declining year on year, Cook believes many people are yet to get on to the smartphone bandwagon. He foresees a world where everyone has a smartphone, not necessarily an iPhone.

Cook is convinced about the one-to-one nature of a smartphone with the user will keep it relevant for many more years, as opposed to say a PC or a TV. He says that artificial intelligence will make smartphone utility even more relevant. Cook has a lot of hope from India, “I see enormous opportunity [in India>. There are still a fair number of people in this country who don’t have smartphones. They’re using flip phones or a feature phone. There are a lot of people switching from Android to iOS, and that’s huge for us because they have a lot more market share than we do, from a unit point of view,” he says.

On the fight against the FBI The San Bernandino murder case really did put Apple in a fix when the FBI was asking Apple to unlock the accused’s iPhone. Tim Cook in a detailed letter to his customers explained why he was not going to do that, a gesture that got endorsement from many big names in technology world including Google CEO Sundar Pichai.

“It became clear that the trade-off, so to speak, was essentially putting hundreds of millions of people at risk for a phone that may or may not have anything on it, and that likely didn’t, because of other things that we knew about. We thought this actually is a clear decision. A hard one, but a clear one,” said Cook explaining the process of arriving at that decision.

On the Apple Culture, and social responsibility Cook said that the DNA of the company hasn’t changed since he took over and its mission is still to provide people with great products. Apple employee strength has increased since 2010 and the company has increased its social responsibility commitments. Cook justified why he didn’t want to be a traditional CEO saying only traditional revenue numbers and balance sheets aren’t important. “There’s an incredible responsibility to the employees of the company, to the communities and the countries that the company operates in, to people who assemble its products, to developers, to the whole ecosystem of the company. And so I have a maybe nontraditional view there,” he said.

He also touched upon being socially responsible and moving human rights forward. Cook’s coming out as gay in an op-ed was lauded by many across the world and the reason for coming out, noted Cook, was kids who sent notes to him about how they were feeling distraught and low on confidence because of their preferences. “It had been planned for quite a long time. It was not something that was done in a moment, by any means. It was probably a year. Just thinking through what to say, how to say it, where to say it, how to do that in a way that advanced what I was trying to do,” said Cook. He also consulted Anderson Cooper who according to Cook handled his coming out in a classy manner.

On Apple’s long-term growth Cook stressed on the importance of Apple’s services such as iCloud, App Store, Apple Pay and so on, and how it is growing to a multi-billion dollar property which will equal some Fortune 100 company in size. With the iPad Pro, Apple is working with enterprise partners since people are using iPad Pro at work. “We’re working with Cisco because they’re incredible with the network infrastructure. We’re working with IBM, who’s written a number of apps. We’re working with SAP because they own the back of the house, in terms of the processing,” he said.

On India

Cook acknowledged that Apple has a small base in India but said cellular infrastructure was a limiting factor. “They have two major carriers putting in a lot of investment to bring 4G. You can imagine if you didn’t have 4G today. You can’t enjoy video on a 3G. Periodically you can, but not consistently. This is a game changer. In India, there’s no fixed line to home. So they’re a mobile society. China’s very much like that as well. And so I look at it and say: markets? Enterprise — huge. Geographies? India is one, but there are others,” he said. Post his visit to the Gandhi museum, Cook is currently reading Mahatma Gandhi’s The Story of My Experiments With Truth.

On leadership Asking experts in respective fields for suggestions when one is stuck in a rut should not be frowned upon, so long as it is not company secrets or anything confidential according to Cook. For instance when Cook wanted some input on returning cash to shareholders, apart from his own team, he decided to call up Warren Buffet who he considered to be an expert on the matter.

“Each time I try to come up with that list. And most of the time people will talk and give really good advice. I think that is so important for a CEO, because the job itself is a lonely job,” Cook reflected.

On Apple’s mistakes

Cook admitted that Apple Maps was a mistake when it launched, but Apple has since improved the product. Another mistake he admitted to was hiring a wrong person for retail - John Browett.

On acquiring companies Apple acquired Beats for $3 billion which according to Cook was because of the talented people and great intellectual property that Beats brought along. Apple has been acquiring 15 to 20 companies a year for the last four years said Cook. According to him, companies that offer strategic importance to Apple will be considered, but not necessarily those that will only bring in revenue. Speaking on Beats, Cook said, “I think we got Apple Music out probably a little sooner than we would have otherwise. We are producing radio shows for Beats. We are producing some original content on video. We started that with a concert kind of video with Taylor Swift. We’ve got “Planet of the Apps,” kind of a cool show. We’ve got a few things that are focused on Apple Music. Over time we may broaden that.”

On competition from Chinese smartphone players Cook did not touch upon competition but stated that China is an important market not just from a revenue perspective but also from a talent perspective. He mentioned that Apple believes in making investment decisions for the long term and currently there is a ‘speed bump with the economy’.

On Artificial intelligence

Cook mentioned about the importance of Siri and how it has been getting intelligent over the years. According to him Apple has worked on AI in a way that will help the customer. Apple has recently opened up Siri to third party devs and apps with those features are expected this fall. Cook said he believed his team could come up with interesting ways to use AI without violating anyone’s privacy. “There’s a new technology called differential privacy which essentially looks at large data sets to predict user behaviors and requests without going to the precise individual, which might violate privacy,” he said.

Cook did not say anything about the alleged Apple Car project or the upcoming Apple iPhone 7 launch. “We’ve always viewed that people love surprises. We don’t have enough anymore in our lives,” he concluded.