Apple CEO Tim Cook defend his company ’s disk on working conditions for the employees that make the division and meet the product that Apple sells . And he take note that Apple is continually assessing how it does business , with an eye toward improve the life of its work force .
“ No one in our industriousness is doing more to ameliorate working conditions than Apple , ” Cook told attendant at the Goldman Sachs conference . “ We are invariably auditing facility , going late into the supply chain , looking for job , finding problems , and fixing problem . And we report everything because we believe that transparence is so very authoritative in this area . I am so fabulously proud of the work our teams are doing in this surface area . They focus on the most hard problems , and they stay with them until they fix them . They are truly a simulation for the industry . ”
Get the highlights of Tim Cook ’s talk at the Goldman Sachs Technology and Internet Conference in ouredited transcript of the event
The way out is clearly one of importance to Cook , who was Apple ’s master operating officeholder before he was appointed CEO last twelvemonth . But Cook noted Tuesday that his experience with factories was n’t limited to his meter as an executive — in the first place in his career , he worked in an Alabama paper grinder and an aluminum works in Virginia .
“ Apple takes worker conditions very in earnest , and we have for a very long time , ” Cook said Tuesday .
While supply Sir Ernst Boris Chain upshot can be complex , Cook acknowledged , the party ’s philosophy toward the people that assemble its mathematical product is very childlike : Every worker has the right to “ a average and safe workplace , complimentary of discrimination , where they can bring in competitive wages and they can vocalise their business organization freely . ” provider have to agree to that to do business sector with Apple .
To that end , Cook equal on a few spicy - button issues concerning worker treatment . On the outcome of underage labor — a practice Cook call “ abhorrent”—Apple ’s goal is to eliminate it entirely from its supply chain . As detailed in this class ’s supplier responsibility report , which Apple released last month , the caller come up no fount of underage labor at the works responsible for final assembly of Apple products . Intentionally engage nonaged doer is a firing offence , accord to Cook .
Apple also does n’t have its provider cut corners on safety , Cook said , with the fellowship focusing on every last detail when it audits a facility . “ If there ’s a fire extinguisher drop from the cafeteria kitchen , then that facility does n’t pass review until that flak extinguisher is in place , ” he said .
inordinate extra time is a focus of Apple ’s provider responsibility program this year . Apple caps its work hebdomad at 60 hour for suppliers . In January , the company began roll up hebdomadary information on more than 500,000 employees in its supply chain . About 84 percentage were in compliance with Apple ’s cap , Cook said—“significantly meliorate from the past , but we can do well . And we ’re taking the unprecedented step of account this monthly on our web site , so that it ’s transparent to everyone what we ’re doing . ”
Apple ’s monitoring is n’t limited to workplace conditions . The company ’s Supplier Responsibility Program also put an emphasis on worker education and development , offer course in subject such as English and entrepreneurship . More than 60,000 employees have attend these classes , according to Cook , who mark that this registration number overstep that of the largest public university in the U.S.
This week , Apple asked the Fair Labor Association to begin inspection of its final fabrication provider . Cook telephone the audited account , which will include Foxconn factories in China , “ believably the most detailed mill audit in the history of flock fabrication , ” and said that he was looking forrard to seeing the result .
“ We jazz that multitude have a very high expectation of Apple , ” Cook said . “ We have an even higher expectation of ourselves . Our customers wait us to conduct and we wil continue to do so . We are blessed to have the smart and most groundbreaking people on Earth , and we put the same variety of travail and get-up-and-go into supply responsibility as we do with our raw products . ”
While work conditions and supply chain subject highlighted Cook ’s talk at the Goldman Sachs conference , they were n’t the only matter covered Tuesday . Cook also touch on Apple ’s most recent iPhone sales agreement figure , in which the caller sold 37 million phones during the October - to - December vacation season . “ It was a nice one-fourth , ” Cook say , to the laughter of those in attendance .
As self-aggrandizing as that phone number might be , Cook see the opportunity to make it even declamatory . He noted that Apple ’s iPhone sale made up only 27 percent of the smartphone grocery and just 9 percent of the overall market for handset . That mean for every person who buy an iPhone last after part , nine other hoi polloi were buy some sort of other phone , be it a compete smartphone model or a more simple handset . “ The truth is that this is a jaw - dropping industry , ” Cook said . “ It has tremendous chance to it . ”
“ So what we ’re focusing on is the same thing we ’ve always focused on , which is making the macrocosm ’s just Cartesian product . And we believe if we ride out laser - focused on that , and continue to develop to the ecosystem around the iPhone then we have a pretty skilful opportunity to take vantage of this enormous market . ”
The iPhone is also facilitate Apple realise a greater foothold in markets where it previously had n’t done a band of byplay . The iPhone “ insert our mark to mass who had never met Apple before , ” Cook said . Consider that in 2007 — the yr before the iPhone arrived in markets outside the U.S.—Apple tallied $ 1.4 billion in merge taxation from China , parts of Asia , India , Latin America , Eastern Europe , the Middle East , and Africa . Those same marketplace generated $ 22 billion in sales for Apple last class .
On the iPad front , Cook go on to show piddling business about stepped - up contest for the iPad , particularly from lower - priced tablets . ( Selling 55 million iPads in the two years since introducing the production probably fit a long way toward relieve those kinds of worries . ) “ terms is seldom the most important affair , ” Cook said . “ A cheap product might sell some units and somebody may get it home and you know , they feel great when they devote from their wallets , but then they get it home and use it , and the joy is live on . ”
Cook was also unconcerned about the possibility that the iPad would run through into Mac sales , though he acknowledged as he has in preceding group discussion calls with analysts that Apple believes this is happening to some extent . “ The means that we always view cannibalization is , we prefer we do it than have somebody else do it , ” Cook say . “ And so we never desire to hold back one of our squad from work up the infrangible greatest affair , even if it takes some gross revenue from another mathematical product area . Our high - parliamentary law bid is , we need to please customer , we ’d like them buy Apple stuff . ”
Other topics plow during Tuesday ’s public lecture included :
