Tim Cook has completed ten years as the head of Apple on Tuesday, after assuming the reins of the multinational on August 24, 2011 due to the resignation for health reasons of the co-founder and until then CEO of the company, Steve Jobs, who he would die on October 5 of that same year.
Along with his resignation, Jobs also conveyed to Apple’s board of directors his “strong recommendation” for the appointment of Tim Cook as his successor to the head of the company, in which he had held the position of chief operating officer from 2005 to 2011, including a brief replacement for Jobs as CEO in 2009.
Although Apple shares reacted with sharp declines ten years ago to the announcement of the departure of Jobs and the appointment of Cook, subsequently endorsed by the company’s board, the evolution of the multinational in the markets under the leadership of Jobs’ dolphin It has beaten all expectations, becoming the most valuable company in the world.
In this way, Apple surpassed in August 2018 the barrier of a trillion dollars (851,380 million euros) of market capitalization, a milestone that the multinational made it to fall into oblivion with astonishing ease just a year ago, when on August 19, 2020 Despite the pandemic, it became the second global company and the first in the United States to exceed 2 trillion dollars (1.7 trillion euros) in capitalization.
Currently, Apple’s market capitalization is around 2.5 trillion dollars (2.12 trillion euros), which implies an increase of around 600% in the value of the company, whose shares are currently trading around 150 dollars, after undertaking a ‘split’ that divided its value by four in September 2020, compared to the $ 11.54 that they were worth when Cook’s appointment occurred ten years ago.
The Cupertino company debuted on December 12, 1980 at a price of $ 22 per share and has since made five splits. In January 2007, after announcing the launch of the iPhone for June of that same year, Apple’s shares were trading below $ 9.
Cook, who was received with skepticism by the market, who doubted his ability to emulate the genius of Jobs at the helm of Apple, has seen during these years his commitment to services and other accessories, apart from the iPhone and the historic iMacs , fattened the accounts of the companies year after year.
In this way, a decade after assuming the leadership of Apple, the executive has managed to expand the business ecosystem of the apple company beyond the ‘hardware’, including the purchase of more than a hundred companies, among which highlights the acquisition of Beats in 2014 for 3,000 million dollars (2,554 million euros), the largest in the history of the company.
The success of Apple under the direction of Tim Cook was reflected in its latest published accounts, when the American technology giant reported that between October 2020 and June 2021, the first nine months of its fiscal year, it achieved a net profit of 74,129 million dollars (62,773 million euros), 65.7% more than in the same period of the previous year, while turnover increased by 34.6%, to 282,457 million dollars (239,187 million euros).
IPhone sales reported Apple 153,105 million dollars (129,650 million euros) in nine months, 37.5% more, while Mac sales increased 32.8%, to 26,012 million dollars (22,027 million euros). euros) and revenue from iPad sales grew 39.5% to $ 23.61 billion (€ 19.993 billion).
On the other hand, sales of wearables and accessories totaled 29,582 million dollars (25,050 million euros), 30% more than a year before, while Apple’s service income grew 27.8%, to 50,148 million dollars (42,466 million euros).
On a personal note, Cook has championed a variety of social causes and became the first CEO of a Fortune 500 company to publicly announce his homosexuality in 2014.
“Apple is about changing the world,” Cook said in a speech at a ‘Fortune’ event in 2018. “It was clear to me a few years ago that you don’t do that by keeping quiet about the things that matter,” he added.
