Apple cuts CEO Tim Cook's pay, citing performance

marketwatch ^ | Jan 6, 2017 8:42 a.m. ET | Austen Hufford

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

Apple Inc. said Chief Executive Tim Cook and other leaders received less total compensation in 2016 as the company missed its revenue and profit goals for the year.

According to a regulatory filing on Friday, Apple said its annual sales of $215.6 billion were 3.7% below its target of $223.6 billion, and its operating income of $60 billion was 0.5% short of the $60.3 billion target.

As a result, company executives got 89.5% of their targeted annual cash incentive. In 2015, the executives got 100%. In all, Mr. Cook received $8.75 million in total 2016 compensation, down from $10.28 million in 2015. Other executives also received lower pay.

[avenir]

“Improvement” is illusory. Seems to me Apple has refined their OS/iOS to a very high level. Same with others. Marketing BS tries to gin up excitement for something “new”, but we’re all thoroughly bored by now. We know the new thing is not going to be a quantum leap.

[PreciousLiberty]

“Sorry if I offend anyone, but if Apple didn’t have a cult following they would be hurting.”

Nonsense. There is no comparable tech company. Apple is the last company standing with a workstation oriented Unix for one thing...hence the huge uptake of Macs among developers. Plus, its approach of making technology as easily accessed as possible has inexplicably not been duplicated by any other company.

Here’s some fuel for the fire from the inventor of the x86 PC:

http://www.cio.com/article/3133945/hardware/ibm-says-macs-save-up-to-543-per-user.html

Apple’s market cap is still over $100 billion ahead of Google and Microsoft...

[zzwhale]

COOK IS THE APPLE EQUIVALENT OF MICROSOFT’S STEVE BOLMER...

BOTH UNIMAGINITIVE DOLTS .... JANITORS .... NOT LEADERS

cook should be fired so he can go fubar a competitior....

how many companies did carly fiorino kamakazi ....

yet ,,, these people are multi millionaires....
something is very wron with executive compensaiton..... way out of whack

[dayglored]

OMG!! Paging DennisW!! DennisW please pick up the white courtesy phone!! Time to sell all your Apple stock, pronto!!

:-)

[PreciousLiberty]

So despite my first reply in this thread, I’d like to see Tim Cook removed as Apple CEO, simply for the reason that he apparently has both no real imagination, and no engineering sense.

There is no reason given its giant pile of cash that Apple isn’t offering a full range of computer products including the xMac (tower configuration with consumer parts and high end graphics cards, a higher end Mac Pro (back to a tower for this one too), and real power laptops with Xeons and up to 64 GB ECC memory.

Really the best thing that could happen would be the realization that it’s time to sell macOS licenses to all comers again. Right now it’s easy to build a Hackintosh running on select hardware, so there’d be very little extra engineering involved. Mac market share has stagnated, and such a move would generate tremendous excitement around macOS again. Then, the halo effect of macOS would lead to a big uptick in iOS device market share. Selling macOS for (say) $300 a copy would also lead to a nice revenue stream from just selling bits.

We’ll see how Apple does over the next couple years. I’m hopeful that if the lackluster product lineup continues, Cook will be gone.

[georgiarat]

Rumors are that Cook is looking to jettison the MacBook Pro since he cannot milk much money from it.

guess he wants to get just a lock on delivering media. That will fail.

They have about six months to get rid of Cook and revitalize the company or it will be beyond saving in its current structure.

[norwaypinesavage]

"More fake news"

That's delusional. When you get less pay from one year to the next, that's called a "pay cut". The reason is irrelevant.

[dayglored]

I, too, would like to see someone better replace Tim Cook. He has limited vision, and today's tech market requires that a company the size of Apple have a visionary CEO at the helm.

Which is to say, Apple needs a CEO who is (at least in part) a Steve Jobs type. Jony Ive is a fine designer, but he's not a visionary.

And although it's unlikely to ever happen, I'd also like to see Apple's CEO not be a flaming liberal.

[ImJustAnotherOkie]

Just rhetoric no facts macOS is the albatross

[zeugma]

Really the best thing that could happen would be the realization that it’s time to sell macOS licenses to all comers again.

This is something I'd really like to see, especially if it were to be targeted towards virtual machines. I'd love to have OSX running in a VM on my Linux workstation. Heck, Apple could even offer just a straight-up VM rather than media, and I'd be happy with it. Sell me a vmware container with a full-featured OSX running on it, and I'd be one happy camper. The beauty of this, is it still allows Apple to maintain control over the environment, and not have to support every tiny little peripheral or card out there, because in a VM, all the devices are standardized and virtualized. Apple would only be worried about connecting to the virtual hardware, which is pretty generic. I doubt I'll see this any time soon, but it would allow me to delete a VM of Win7 that I have that performs exactly 1 task - backing up my iPhone.

[minnesota_bound]

They do have a cool looking new office building.

[dayglored]

> ...sell macOS licenses to all comers...

Much as I like it, there are two killer problems with that suggestion, that will (IMO) forever keep Apple from doing so:

1. Main reason: Apple is a HARDWARE manufacturer, not a software vendor. They sell integrated SYSTEMS of hardware plus software. They "give away" the software because they need to sell the hardware.

2. Other reason: The price of MacOS would be too high for most interested users. MacOS comes with a bunch of large applications (by contrast, Windows does not come with MS-Office), so either Apple would cut those features from the OS to sell it at a Windows-competitive price, or charge something equivalent to Windows+Office. And of course, Linux is free and LibreOffice is free. So where's the profit in selling MacOS at a reasonable price? Non-existent.

There's no way Apple will let MacOS loose on Hackintoshes, much less hardware-free VMs.

I say the above with some sadness, because I'd LOVE to see them do it. But it ain't gonna happen.

[RegulatorCountry]

They tried licensing in a limited way back in the day, not a stellar experience. I owned one, by Power Computing of Round Rock, TX. They won’t go there again.

[zeugma]

Other reason: The price of MacOS would be too high for most interested users.

Probably for most users. I'd be willing to pay almost as much as a basic Mac Mini for one though. I'm probably not representative of the average person though.

You're right. We'll probably not see it any time soon, but I can still dream!

[dayglored]

> I'd be willing to pay almost as much as a basic Mac Mini for one though.

As you may know, Apple does allow unlimited use of MacOS in VMs, as long as the VMs are running on Apple hardware.

So, for example, my MacMini Has VMware Fusion, and I can create VMs running MacOS at will (very useful for testing potentially destructive programs or developing system code).

So if you're willing to spring for one Mac Mini plus $80 for Fusion, you have what you need to run multiple instances of MacOS (in VMs).

I know, that's not quite what you are looking for. Just trying to be helpful... :-)

[Richard Kimball]

Apple still sells a megaton of stuff, and I’ve never been in an Apple Store that wasn’t packed.
That said, each iteration of Apple products is a little less appealing to me, and there’s no way I’d buy an iPhone 7.
The new products don’t seem well thought out, from an ergonomic standpoint. That was always Apple’s big strength.

[meyer]

I have an early 2015 Macbook Pro that I really like. And an iPhone 6 (the normal one, not the big one). I have no incentive to upgrade either one. If my phone was a 5, I would consider a 6 or 7 but there is no compelling reason for me to upgrade either item at this point.

[RegulatorCountry]

I’ve got a 5S and it’s still going strong. I intentionally stay behind the curve to keep the cost down. Apple fan from way back so that’s what I buy and use, but no need to keep the latest and greatest. It works for a long time and I use it until it doesn’t.

[zeugma]

So if you're willing to spring for one Mac Mini plus $80 for Fusion, you have what you need to run multiple instances of MacOS (in VMs).

I know, that's not quite what you are looking for. Just trying to be helpful... :-)

Interesting thought. Does the Mini typically come with media? I'm pretty sure I can use a Fusion VM in vmware.

[Neidermeyer]

The key difference between Jobs and Cook is that Jobs had strategic vision and tactical tenacity while Cook thinks efficiency and profits. They were a great team but Cook could never be successful as a CEO of a company needing strategic vision and marketing skills.

*****************

Apple is the GM of the 1980's and 90's ,, still #1 in sales but nobody is excited about their products and many are duds...