Apple shake up executives / major projects put on hold

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“Apple Inc. is shaking up leadership and reordering priorities across its services, artificial intelligence, hardware and retail divisions as it works to reduce the company’s reliance on iPhone sales.,” Tripp Mickle reports for The Wall Street Journal. “The changes, which can be traced back to last year, have included high-profile hires, noteworthy departures, meaningful promotions and consequential restructurings.They have rattled rank-and-file employees unaccustomed to frequent leadership changes and led Apple to put several projects on hold while new managers are given a chance to reassess priorities, according to people familiar with the matter.”

“The primary reasons for the shifts vary by division. But collectively, they reflect Apple’s efforts to transition from an iPhone-driven company into one where growth flows from services and potentially transformative technologies,” Mickle reports. “Leadership moves of the past few months include promoting artificial intelligence chief John Giannandrea to the executive team; replacing departing retail chief Angela Ahrendts with head of human resources Deirdre O’Brien; and pushing out top Siri voice-assistant executive Bill Stasior. Apple has also trimmed 200 staffers from its autonomous-vehicle project, and is redirecting much of the engineering resources in its services business, led by Eddy Cue, into efforts around Hollywood programming.”

“Apple has said it aims to pass 500 million paid subscriptions across its platform by 2020, up from 360 million now. To help reach the goal, Apple is spending more than $1 billion to create original shows this year starring Hollywood A-listers,” Mickle reports. “It has considered bundling video into a monthly subscription offering that would also include cloud storage, according to people familiar with the plans. The company also is in talks with major newspapers about offering a news service that would cost $10 a month. It has discussed bundling those services together into a single subscription along with iCloud storage for photos and files, a person familiar with the plan said.”

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