Top Stories

_____________________________________________

 

http://img19.imageshack.us/img19/7261/mzlvszcpxfs175x17575.jpg

Fat Jump Pro (By SID On)

Developer: SID On Price: $0.99 Version Reviewed: 1.2 Download: here Requirements: Compatible with iPhone, iPod touch, and iPad.Requires iOS 4.0 or later. Located in the Warsow,Poland-SID on an independent mobile application developer has announced a recent update of Fat Jump Pro for the iPhone,iPad and iPod touch.Fat Jump Pro is a fast paced vertical arcade action for the iOS devices.Using the tilt controls the player must guide the jumping,little green hero (a healthy and crispy cucumber) up a never ending series of platforms...

https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEheOZX_2fWULSTc9cCEPViLz6CGJ0M-A3PeJDmVhpJSA02I84Z1gef0cif5bu640uxtj9uzh47wf80tpw9as6jGYUVC9hq8orbuI9gZB15pmPjzrI5OgvQquFCHNGUWn2gIEZzzu2HvNJQ/s1600/hello.png  Detectives’ Chase
http://img.148apps.com/images/itms/471/471857988/icon175x175.png  Ticket to Ride Pocket
http://img.148apps.com/images/itms/441/441083639/icon175x175.png  NFL Pro 2012
http://img.148apps.com/images/itms/466/466067444/icon175x175.png  Blood and Glory

 

Latest Stories

______________________________________________

Tuesday 14 February 2012

Apple CEO Tim Cook Speaks at Goldman Sachs Technology Conference


Apple CEO Tim Cook will speak at the Goldman Sachs Technology Conference today at 3:30PM Eastern / 12:30PM Pacific. Cook's presentation will be broadcast via Quicktime on Apple's website and MacRumors will be liveblogging the event on this page. 

Cook has spoken at the annual conference a number of times (2007, 2008, 2010), but this will be his first time at the event in the role of Apple CEO. While he has not made any major announcements at the venue in the past, he has at times offered an interesting perspective into Apple's business. 

Tim Cook is on-stage. Open's with "safe harbor" statement noting that his speech may include "forward-looking statements." 

-- 

Q: What should investors know about Apple's relationship with the supply chain and the workers within it? 

First thing I would want everyone to know is that Apple takes working conditions very seriously, and we have for a very long time. Whether workers are in Europe or Asia or the United States, we care about every worker. I've spent a lot of time in factories, personally. Not just as an executive. I worked at a paper mill in Alabama and an aluminum plant in Virginia. Many of our top executives visit factories on a regular basis. We have hundreds of employees based there full time. 

We are very connected to the process and we understand working conditions at a very granular level. I realize that the supply chain is complex and I'm sure that you realize this. The issues around it are complex. Our commitment is simple: every worker has the right to a fair and safe work environment, free of discrimination, where they can earn competitive wages and they can voice their concerns freely. Apple's suppliers must live up to this to do business with Apple. 

we also believe that education is the great equalizer and that if people are provided the skills and knowledge, they can improve their lives. We've put a lot of effort to supplying educational resources to our workers throughout our supply chain. We supply free classes in many place thoroughout our supply chain. More than 60,000 employees have attended these classes, which is pretty amazing when you think about it. 

If you take all these employees and move them to one location, it would be larger than Arizona State -- which is the largest college in the United States. This is a powerful stepping stone for workers looking to enhance their careers and their lives. 

You can read the details on problems we're looking to fix on our website, but I can tell you that no one in our industry is doing more to improve working conditions than Apple. We are constantly auditing facilities going deep into the supply chain, looking for problems, finding problems and fixing problems. We report everything because we believe transparency is so very important in this area. I am so incredibly proud of the work that our teams are doing in this area. They focus on the most difficult problems and they stay with them until they fix them. They are truly a model for the industry. 

We think the use of underaged labor is abhorrent. It's extremely rare in our supply chain, but our top priority is to eliminate it totally. We've done that with our final assembly and we're now working with vendors farther down in the supply chain. If we find a supplier that intentionally hires underage labor, it's a firing offense. 

We don't let anyone cut corners on safety. If there is a problem on safety, we seek out the foremost experts and set a new standard and apply that to the entire supply chain. We focus on the details. If there is a fire extinguisher missing from a cafeteria, that facility doesn't pass inspection until that fire extinguisher is in place. 

We are continuing to focus on problems endemic to our industry like excessive overtime. Our code of conduct has a cap of 60 hours per workweek. We have consistently found violations of this code over the course of our time, so at the beginning of this year we announced that we are determined to drive widespread change. We have begun to manage working hour at a very micro basis. 

In January, we collected weekly data on over a half million workers in our supply chain. We had 84% compliance. This is significantly improved from the past, but we can do better. We're taking the unprecedented step of reporting this monthly on our website, so it's transparent to everyone what we're doing. 

The Fair Labor Association began an audit of our final assembly vendors. We started with this last year and in January we were the first technology company to be welcomed into their assembly. Their audit is probably the biggest audit in manufacturing in history. I'm looking forward to seeing the results. We know that people have a very high expectation of Apple. We have an even higher expectation of ourselves. Our customer expect us to lead and we will continue to do so. We are blessed to have the smartest and most innovative people on earth. We put the same kind of effort and energy into supplier responsibility as we do with our new products. 

That is what Apple is all about. 

37 million units of iPhones shipped. When do we run into the Law of Large Numbers? What are the growth opportunities coming up? 

37 million is a big number. It was a decent quarter. It was 37 million -- more than we'd ever done before. We were pretty happy with that, but let me give you the way I look at the numbers. As I see it, that 37 million for last quarter represented 24% of the smartphone market. There's 3 out of 4 people buying something else. 9 out of 10 phone buyers are buying something else. 

Handset market is projected to go from 1.5 to 2 billion units. Take it in the context of these numbers, the truth is that this is a jaw-dropping industry with enormous opportunity. Up against those numbers, the numbers don't seem so large anymore. What seems so large to me is the opportunity. 

What we're focusing on is the same thing we've always focused on. Making the world's best products. 

We think if we stay laser-focused on that, and continue to develop the ecosystem around the iPhone, that we have a pretty good opportunity to take advantage of this enormous market. 

The biggest opportunity is the emerging markets. Large portion of that is the prepaid market. Apple has done very well but the wholesale iPhone price point is nowhere near what we would expect in the prepaid market. How do you make it more affordable to those markets? 

Those markets are critical. The smartphone market is projected to be 1 billion units in 2015, 3 years from now. 25% of that is projected to come from China and Brazil. Just two of those markets -- 25% -- obviously those are very critical markets, but there are others as well. 

We've been very focused on China. We've had incredible success with iPhone -- we've gone from a few hundred million in revenue to last year with $13 billion. We've been really focused on trying to understand there market there and taking those earnings to other markets. As it turns out, not very many people agree with me on this, probably. 

What I see is that there is a lot of commonality in what people around the world want. Everyone in every country wants the best product as it turns out. They're not looking for a cheap version of the best product -- they're looking for the best product. 

In the emerging markets there are very big differences in go-to-market. In most of the developed market, the carrier owns most of the distribution. In emerging markets, the retailer has most of the distribution. The whole go-to-market has to be changed significantly. Last year, we covered price points in the subsidized markets from $0 on up. That doesn't translate to zero in the prepaid market, but we're covering more price points there. 

The paramount thing is the product. It is the focus. Of course distribution, we've recognized the difference there and in purchasing power. Unlike many people, I don't subscribe to the premise that prepay is prepay is prepay. We convinced China Unicom to try to postpay. It wasn't big there but they tried it and it's working really well. It's great for everyone because customer gets cheaper phone and carrier locks in a customer. It's a different way to look at the issue and it's been successful in China. 

When Apple introduced the iPod in 2001, when we launched the iTunes Music Store and launched that on Windows, the iPod created a halo for the Mac. For 23 straight quarters we've outgrown the market on the Mac. 

The halo that was created by iPod for the Mac, was created in developed markets. It was created in the US, Western Europe, Japan, Australia, Canada. It didn't work nearly to the same level in Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa, China, Latin America. People were already getting music from their phones. The world changed for us when the iPhone was launched. 

The iPhone introduced Apple to millions of people -- our brand -- to people who had never met Apple before. Now, it's interesting to look -- take China as an example -- last year the Macintosh grew more than 100% in China, year-over-year. Not on a big base, but 100% is pretty good. The market grew 10%, so we outgrew the market 10x. 

The iPhone is creating a halo for the Macintosh. iPhone has also created a halo for iPad. You can definitely see the synergistic effect of these products, not only in developed markets, but also in emerging markets where Apple wasn't resonant for most of its life. 

In 2007, we didn't launch the iPhone until 2008. In 2007, the revenue combined from Greater China, several other parts of Asia, India, Latin America, Eastern Europe, Middle East, Africa, was $1.4 billion. Revenue last year for that same group of countries was $22 billion. We're only on the surface.

0 Responses to “Apple CEO Tim Cook Speaks at Goldman Sachs Technology Conference”

Post a Comment