Tim Cook: We Love to Work on Products Where Hardware, Software, and Services Intersect

During today’s earnings call covering the first fiscal quarter of 2021 (fourth calendar quarter of 2020), Apple CEO Tim Cook was asked to provide a framework for how Apple evaluates product opportunities in new markets.

Cook of course declined to give specific information, but he did provide some insight into what Apple considers when making a decision on whether to develop a product.

The framework that we use is around ‘Is this a product that we would want to use?’ That’s a pretty high bar. Is it a big enough market to be in? Unless it’s an adjacency product, then it’s about customer experience.

There’s no set way that we’re looking at it. No formula. But we take into account all of those things.

Cook said that Apple “loves to work on” products where there’s a requirement that hardware, software, and services come together. “We believe that the magic really occurs at that intersection.”

He also went to explain that Apple still has growth opportunities for its current portfolio of products.

I think that we have some really good opportunities out there, and if you look at our current portfolio of products, we still have relatively low share in a number of cases in very big markets. We feel that we have really good upside there and good upside in the services area too, which we’ve been working on for some time with coming online in the last year to year plus.

Though Cook gave no specifics, there are established rumors that indicate Apple is working on an electric self-driving vehicle and some kind of AR/VR headset, both of which are future products that will mark Apple breaking into new markets.