On March 4, local time, Apple held an annual shareholders' meeting online. At the conference, Apple directors such as Cook, chairman Arthur Levinson and former vice president of the United States, Al Gore, were re-elected. "Cook's $100 million annual salary," which was previously opposed by an Institutional Shareholder Services ISS, was also approved.
This year marks Cook's eleventh year as CEO of Apple, and on August 24, 2011, Apple officially announced Cook as CEO. The question of when Cook will retire has also been a major concern, after all, he only signed a 10-year contract with Apple.
However, at present, Cook may not resign as CEO of Apple in a short period of time. Previously, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman said that due to the signing of the agreement, Cook will stay in office at least until 2025, and it is predicted that retirement will be announced between 2025 and 2028. Cook also revealed in an interview last year that although the date has not yet been confirmed, he may not stay in office for another decade.
Despite his decade as CEO of Apple, Cook has been labeled with countless labels, such as "lack of innovation", "professional manager", "master tailor", "businessman who only knows how to make money" and so on. But there's no denying that he led Apple to a new level over the course of a decade.
At the beginning of 2022, Apple's stock price rose as high as $182.88, and its market value once exceeded $3 trillion, becoming the world's first company to enter this threshold. This is not only the world's first market capitalization of 3 trillion yuan, but also equivalent to the GDP volume of the world's fifth-largest economy, second only to the United States, China, Japan and Germany, of which Germany's GDP is 3.8 trillion US dollars.
Soon, Cook also received a "big red packet". According to Apple's proxy statement, in 2021, Apple CEO Tim Cook's total compensation will be $98.73 million (about 630 million yuan), of which the basic salary is $3 million, most of which comes from $82.35 million worth of equity awards and $12 million of non-equity incentive compensation.
The Decade of "Merchant" Cook
In a decade, Apple has become a behemoth.
In fiscal 2011, Apple's full-year revenue and net profit were $108.2 billion and $25.9 billion, respectively. Not long ago, Apple announced the first fiscal quarter of fiscal 2022 as of December 25, 2021, and its total revenue in one quarter has reached $123.9 billion, the highest single-quarter revenue in history, and the net profit has reached $34.63 billion.
In addition, Apple's cash holdings grew from $76 billion to nearly $200 billion in 2021 compared to 2011, and the number of employees reached 147,000, more than double the 60,400 when Jobs left.
The excellent performance is also reflected in Apple's stock price, which has grown nearly 10-fold since Cook became CEO in August 2011 and became the world's first company to reach a trillion-dollar market capitalization in 2018. Apple's board of directors said in a filing that from Cook's appointment as Apple's CEO in 2011 to September 2020, including dividends, it has returned 867% to shareholders.
Behind these impressive achievements, it is inseparable from Cook's credit. The outside world often criticizes the appearance of the classic products of the iOS system and Apple mobile phone for so many years, and even the conference follows the Jobs style.
But it also overlooked some obvious changes, apple from launching only one phone a year to updating several at the same time in a year. And the Apple Watch and AirPods launched in the Cook era were both huge successes, accounting for most of Apple's sales today.
In 2014, an Apple Watch without Jobs' participation came out, and within 24 hours of the conference, apple Watch sold 270,000 pieces, until the second quarter of 2021, the Apple Watch user base has exceeded 100 million. After that, Cook launched AirPods that brought global headphones into the "TWS era", once again achieving great sales success.
The biggest change is that Cook has freed Apple from the model of almost making money by selling hardware, and the representative products are Apple News+ (content subscription), Apple Card (credit card), Apple Arcade (game subscription), and Apple TV+ (video service) that cover various use scenarios of mobile phones.
Today's combination of "hardware + software + services" has built an Apple ecosystem that allows users to have a better experience, and Apple's commercial value is expanding step by step. Apple's services revenue grew from less than $3 billion in fiscal 2011 to $53.8 billion in 2021, giving investors confidence that even as iPhone sales slow, it could find new sources of revenue.
Whether it is the product innovation or the expansion of the software business, it is inseparable from the investment of R&D funds. Although Apple's research and development expenses do not account for a high proportion of total revenue, they are actually a considerable amount. From $2.4 billion in fiscal 2011, R&D expenses have increased to nearly $20 billion in fiscal 2021.
These achievements have also made Apple the reputation of "the world's most valuable company". Apple has also assumed more social responsibilities and invested heavily in health, education and the environment.
Will Cook's masterpiece come out?
"No masterpiece" has also been a label on Cook, Bloomberg reporter Mark Gurman revealed that Cook hopes to "develop an important new category" for Apple before retiring. However, Mark Gurman believes that this is not the Apple car that many people expect, and it is more likely to be an AR/VR device.
Cook's approach to AR has been positive, and he has said ar promises to amplify the value between technology and people. Last year, Apple added AR technology to the invitation to the iPhone 13 conference: using the latest version of the iOS device, clicking on the Apple logo floating in the page can automatically activate the ARKit browser and trigger the AR experience.
However, so far, this is only a technology promotion but no landing products, Apple Glass has not yet come out, it has also been speculated by the outside world that it may become the next generation of "iPhone". But before Apple Glass really came out, everything was unknown.
As for Apple's car, Tony Fadell, former senior vice president of Apple, mentioned in an interview that as early as 2007, Jobs had discussed the car-building plan with him, but then the plan was stalled due to the iterative work of the iPhone. In 2014, Apple secretly established the "Project Titan" car project plan; in 2016, it transformed the research and development of autonomous driving technology; in 2021, it launched a car-making plan again, and cooperated with Japanese and Korean automobile companies.
According to the analysis of the article "More than 20,000 patents published by Tiger Sniff, see through Apple's car", in 2017, 2018 and 2019, most of the patents applied by Apple were related to V2X, automatic driving, body structure, interior, seats, body control, etc., and the total number has also increased. In 2020 alone, the number of related patents reached 72, including battery technology, automatic driving (including V2X), body control, Lidar technology, machine learning, charging facilities and many other patents related to car details.
However, at present, there is no shortage of personnel turmoil in the process of Apple's car manufacturing, and the high-level departure has also made the research and development process of Apple Car confusing. At present, the leader of Apple's car-making team is Kevin Lynch (Apple Watch software executive), and it is unknown whether he can successfully lead Apple to a big step forward in the field of car manufacturing.
Whether Apple Car and AR wearables can be successfully launched during Cook's tenure is also a concern for consumers and investors. But in any case, Cook has spent a decade to push Apple to the world, pry open the Chinese and Korean markets, and establish a complete supply chain, products, and brand system. In the history of Apple's development, Cook is undoubtedly indispensable.