Will Apple also lay off thousands of employees? “Never say never,” says Tim Cook
Will Apple also lay off thousands of employees? “Never say never,” says Tim Cook.
“Never say never,” Cook explained, refusing to make promises he might not be able to keep. But for the moment the situation remains good.
Yesterday Apple announced the financial results of the last quarter. As expected, the company reported a decline in revenue for the first time since 2019 . Still in line with analysts’ expectations, sales of iPhones and Macs fared particularly badly, while services fared much better. Curiously, and even more unexpectedly, the iPads did quite well.
Apple CEO Tim Cook confronted the elephant in the room. Will Apple also join the other big tech companies by announcing a shower of layoffs all over the world? The CEO’s response does not exclude any possibility, but at the moment the company has no plans for new redundancies .
“Never say never,” Cook explained, refusing to make promises he might not be able to keep. “Either way, we see layoffs as a last resort.”
Amazon, Google, Twitter, PayPal and Microsoft have laid off tens of thousands of employees. In large part, the layoffs depend on the relentless hiring campaigns of the past few years, when the tech sector was in a position of seemingly unstoppable growth. Now that growth has stalled (and the worst may yet be to come), companies no longer need as many employees and layoffs are the direct consequence. Unlike the rest, Apple has never hired more than it could afford, and while declining, its numbers are still in relative health: the slump in sales in the smartphone market, for example, has been fairly contained. For these reasons, many analysts argue that Apple may not have to announce redundancies.
