Bloomberg (August 30)
“The European Commission’s decision to impose a tax bill of 13 billion euros ($14.5 billion) on Apple is unjust and unnecessary. And the harm is not confined to a single company: The ruling has cast a cloud of uncertainty over Europe’s corporate-tax rules, potentially affecting all multinational investors.”
Tags: Apple, Corporate tax, European Commission, Investors, Rules, Ruling, Tax bill, Uncertainty, Unjust
Wall Street Journal (July 12)
With about 1,000 companies making smartphones globally, only “one reaps nearly all the profits” and that company accounts for just 20% of smartphone unit sales. “Apple Inc. recorded 92% of the total operating income from the world’s eight top smartphone makers in the first quarter, up from 65% a year earlier.”
Tags: Apple, Companies, Operating income, Profits, Smartphones
Financial Times (May 4)
EU policy makers’ now have their “sights have fixed upon ‘Gafa’ — the acronym used to denote Google, Apple, Facebook and Amazon.” The regulators do not hate technology. “They understand that digital services invigorate the economy. But…. Europe has recently felt itself to be more on the losing side; however measured, not one of the world’s largest internet companies is European.”
Tags: Amazon, Apple, Digital services, Economy, EU, Facebook, Gafa, Google, Technology
Wall Street Journal (March 11)
“Having attacked everything else, Apple is going after the last screen left. But where’s the big innovation?” This missing element may explain the “subdued” reaction greeting Apple’s roll out of the iWatch.
Tags: Apple, Innovation, iWatch, Reaction, Screen
The Telegraph (October 16)
“Instead of changing a structure of employment that clearly does not work for women, Apple and Facebook are offering employees the chance to freeze their eggs and have children later.” Egg freezing and storage is the latest Silicon Valley perk designed “to attract more female employees” and “tackle the Gender Pay Gap.” But to some, this sounds surreal. “Women freeze the source of life itself? That’s not a perk, it’s an outrage.”
Tags: Apple, Children, Eggs, Employment, Facebook, Freezing, Gender, Outrage, Pay gap, Perk, Silicon Valley, Women
The Economist (September 21)
“Nine of the world’s ten most valuable firms are American.” A rising stock market and the euro crisis are partly responsible, but the reasons go deeper. “First, America’s mix of resilience and renewal. Three of its nine biggest firms have their roots in a 16-year period in the late 19th century—Exxon, General Electric and Johnson & Johnson. Their durability reflects their powerful corporate cultures. But the country still does creative destruction, too. IBM and Intel have slid down the rankings to be replaced by Apple and Google. Chevron, an energy firm, has gone from a laggard to a world-beater. Success has been anything but parochial. Six of the nine biggest firms sell more abroad than at home.”
Tags: Apple, Chevron, Corporate culture, Creative destruction, Durability, Euro crisis, Exxon, General electric, Google, IBM, Intel, Johnson & Johnson, Rankings, Stock market, Success, U.S., Value
The Economist (March 9)
“The annual shareholder proxy season now getting under way in America could be the liveliest ever. The bosses of Apple and Disney have drawn flak not only for their strategies but also for their pay. Activist shareholders are on the march. About time, too…. Trying to improve the way a firm is run is more constructive than the traditional ‘Wall Street walk’, whereby disgruntled shareholders simply sell their shares.”
Tags: Activists, Apple, Disney, Pay, Proxy season, Shareholders, Strategies, U.S.
Barrons (January 30)
“Fracking is creating a new source of cheap energy. By 2020, the U.S. is expected to become the world’s largest energy producer. And the falling cost of natural gas (now about a third of Europe’s and less than a quarter of Japan’s) is attracting corporate attention. “After decades of outsourcing… companies like Apple, Caterpillar, Ford Motor, General Electric, and Whirlpool are making more of their goods on American soil again. It isn’t just U.S. companies that are drawn to our cheap energy, weak dollar, and stagnant wages. Samsung Electronics plans a $4 billion semiconductor plant in Texas, Airbus SAS is building a factory in Alabama, and Toyota wants to export minivans made in Indiana to Asia.”
Tags: Airbus, Apple, Caterpillar, Energy, Ford Motor, Fracking, General electric, Samsung, Toyota, U.S., Whirlpool
New York Times (December 30)
Negative press coverage of companies like Apple and Foxconn has caused them “to make changes, like raising wages, limiting work hours and providing chairs with backs instead of stools at workstations.” This should be a major catalyst for change. “For companies operating in China and earning billions in profits, corporate responsibility demands that workers be treated and paid fairly.”
Tags: Apple, China, Corporate responsibility, Foxconn, Press coverage, Workers
Bloomberg (October 10)
“Sony, Sharp and Panasonic now have a combined market capitalization of about $29 billion, compared with Sony’s peak valuation of about $120 billion in 1999. Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s market capitalization is $596 billion and Samsung’s is $175 billion.” Japan’s electronics makers seem to be following in the footsteps of Detroit’s automakers. They haven’t kept up with changing markets and are being left behind with higher costs and shrinking market share. “Having the most-advanced technology—once a key strength of Japanese manufacturers—matters less as consumers increasingly pay attention to content, apps and user-friendliness rather than hardware specifications.”
