Keeping you in the loop about some of the things that happened around Apple, CEO Tim Cook and Steve Jobs this past week.
Foxconn Factory Upgrades Co-funded by Apple. Foxconn CEO Terry Gou said Apple will share in the cost of improving labor conditions at its factories in China where iPhones and iPads are made. "We've discovered that this (improving factory conditions) is not a cost. It is a competitive strength," Gou told reporters after a ceremony for a new headquarters in Shanghai, according to news reports. "I believe Apple sees this as a competitive strength along with us, and so we will split the initial costs." Foxconn, which employs about 1.2 million workers, said in February it would raise workers' pay after being criticized for its labor practices, and in March said it had agreed to hire tens of thousands of new factory workers as part of a plan to eliminate illegal overtime. No word on how Apple and Foxconn are splitting the costs or what those costs will be or why Foxconn can't pay for them on its own or...I'll stop now.
MacBook Air. Apple is readying a new version of the MacBook Air and you should expect it in the next few weeks as the company taps into ongoing demand for lightweight, portables. Sales of notebooks account for 70 percent of Mac revenue, and Apple might need the sales pick up in the quarter ending in June if its prediction that iPhone sales won't be as high as last quarter proves true. But Digitimes is saying there will be a $799, 11-inch version of the MacBook Air — although they don't expect until the third quarter (the current pricing on the 11-inch model is $999). Coincidentally (or not), Hewlett-Packard just announced a new Air rival: the HP Envy Spectre XT . Dell released its ultrathin XPS 13 earlier this year.
Google Maps Get Lost? Apple may be ditching Google Maps in the new version of its iOS operating system in favor a new maps application developed inhouse that will tie to its own backend. According to rumor site 9 to 5 Mac, "While Apple has always had full control of the actual iOS Maps application design, the backend has belonged to Google. That will change with iOS 6 thanks to their purchases of Placebase, C3 Technologies, and Poly9; acquisitions that Apple has used to create a complete mapping database. The rumor site is also reporting that Apple Maps will also have a 3-D mode. And when might we see this? Most likely at the Apple Worldwide Developers Conference in San Francisco June 11.
Apple Moves Into the Fortune Top 20. There are endless ways to wax poetic about Apple. It's the world most valuable company, with a market capitalization of $530 billion. Its shares have gained 40 percent far this year and are trading at $566.71. It's got $110 billion in cash. Last year, annual sales topped $100 billion, putting it in a rarefied group of companies; they're expected to climb to $162.5 billion this year. All good, right? But not good enough to have Apple crack the Fortune 10 — though it did move into the top 20 (it's in 17th place this year, up from 35 last year). Says Fortune, "The company emerged from the tragic passing of co-founder Steve Jobs saddened but in no perceptible way weakened."
It's All About the Brand. Apple co-founder Steve "Woz" Wozniak, currently on tour in Australia talking about The Apple Story, said that it's unlikely the Apple will become the victim of its own success. ""Apple a victim of its own success? You could have asked that at any point along the way. Of course there's always a chance, and there's also a chance that it will become twice as successful because of its success....I've never seen the Apple brand tarnished in all the time, even when the company was doing poorly. That's what's holding it up — it's like a savings account." The Woz also said that the one person who deserves credit for making Apple a success is Mike Markkula, who was the company's first investor. ``Mike Markulla was actually the one man and one person who made Apple a successful company. He made it a marketing-driven company (as opposed to a engineering-driven company)."
Apple Execs Keep Cook-in'. Since taking over as CEO in August, Tim Cook has managed to keep almost all of Apple's top lieutenants from jumping ship — the notable exception being retail chief Ron Johnson, who became CEO of JCPenney in November. But a few other Apple executives have gone on to other pastures (but are they greener? The list now includes Simon Prakash, Apple's senior director of product integrity who left to oversee "quality and reliability" for Google X, the part of the company in charge of top-secret projects; David Tupman, head of hardware engineering for the iPhone and iPod division; and Dag Kittlaus, the co-founder of SIRI.
Retail Stores Chief Says Hello. John Browett, who replaced Ron Johnson as retail chief in April, sent out a note this week to Apple's store employees, introducing himself, according to various sites that got a copy of the email. "It's incredibly impressive to be on the inside of Apple Retail. Many of my friends, relatives, and former colleagues have written to tell me how lucky I am to be working with such a great group of people, and I couldn't agree more. While our stores are fantastic and our products are amazing, it really is our people who make the difference in creating the best retail experience." Apple has 363 stores, a third of which are outside the U.S., and employs more than 27,000 retail employees in the U.S.
A Day In the Life. Steve Jobs liked to spend his mornings in face-to-face meetings with his product and management teams, his afternoons in the design lab with Apple’s top designer Jony Ive, and his evenings sitting around the long wooden table in the kitchen at his home in Palo Alto, California, having dinner with his wife and kids. “Steve was very, very strict about filtering out what he thought of as distractions,” Walter Isaacson, author of the best-selling biography on Steve Jobs, said in an interview with the Harvard Business Review. “People would come to him with all sorts of problems — legal problems, personnel problems, whatever. And if he didn’t want to deal with it, he would not focus on it. He’d give you sort of a blank stare. He would not answer, he wouldn’t answer email…He would pick four or five things that were really important for him to focus on and then just filter out — almost brutally — filter out the rest.”
In other news, Jobs will be honored in a video tribute at the Webby Awards on May 21, with George Lucas, Bill Clinton, Jon Stewart and Will.i.am sharing their thoughts on Apple's former leader. And the more than 300 patents that Jobs received will be on display through July 8 at the Smithsonian's Ripley Center in D.C. as part of an exhibit called, "The Patents and Trademarks of Steve Jobs: Art and Technology That Changed the World." In addition to more than 300 documents, the exhibit also includes a 1985 Apple Mac, mouse and keyboard and a NeXT Computer from 2005. Can't make it to D.C.? There's an online exhibition here.
