It’s been five years since Steve Jobs passed on the baton to Tim Cook, and in these five years, Apple has seen a lot of ups and downs. Cook has triumphed in some situations, and in others, he’s had to bite the dust. But overall, there’s no denying that he’s had a great run as the CEO of the world’s most profitable company.
Here’s a rundown of his half-a-decade long stint as the CEO of Apple in 5 simple charts.
Note: All five of these charts first appeared on Recode.
1. Revenue and profits were both doubled
When Steve gave Tim the company, it had a revenue of $100 billion and a profit of $25 billion. As of this year, Cook has more than doubled both those numbers, which now stand at $234 billion and $54 billion respectively!
2. Slowing growth and falling sales
Apple’s decade-long growth streak of revenue came to halt with Steve Jobs death. Faced with losing shareholders’ faith in the company, a slowing economy, a stagnating smartphone market, and fierce competition from Google and Samsung, Tim Cook fought hard. On occasions, he even had to go to the court to sort things out.
But sales still suffered, and the year-over-year growth rate that set records finally came down to zero and even went negative. Apple is still growing, no doubt, but it’s growing at a rate that’s slower than what it was 10 years back.
3. A billion iphones sold
Apple hit a landmark that many thought would be an impossible feat to achieve — selling a billion pieces of a single electronic device. However, Apple reached that milestone, and we were all left with our jaws hanging open. Of course, Tim Cook was not directly responsible for all those sales, but still, it was under his watch that the milestone was reached, and hence, he’ll go down in the history associated with that number.
4. Beating the Wall Street
Market analysts had predicted that with Steve Jobs’ death, investors would lose confidence in Apple stock, causing it to plummet beyond recovery. Tim Cook’s greatest achievement, perhaps, is that he stopped that disaster from happening. After an initial (and thankfully brief) fall in value, Apple stock grew steadily under Tim Cook. In fact, Apple has outperformed the general market consistently, thus proving the whole of Wall Street wrong.
5. Investing in Human Capital
Apple today boasts of around 1,25,000 employees. 5 years ago, when Jobs died, Apple had a strength of 60,000 employees. In these five years, Tim Cook has managed to more than double Apple’s worth.
We cannot even begin to understand how stressful it must be for Cook to be heading one of the biggest companies in the world. Even more so because he was asked to fill the shoes of probably the greatest visionary of his time. But, despite the road bumps he had to face, Apple is thankful to have him at its helm.
We congratulate Tim Cook on his achievements so far and wish him the best for the years to come. May he have yet another long and prosperous run ahead of him.