A new report from Bloomberg’s Mark Gurman peeks inside attitudes at Apple, and suggests that innovation-hungry engineers and developers may get their way soon. Apparently under incoming CEO John Ternus, the company may take money that might otherwise have been funneled to shareholders, and spend it on new ideas.
Gurman writes:
“For a while, many engineers and product designers inside Apple have pushed for the company to hold on to more of its cash rather than return it, arguing that the money could be better used on major acquisitions, hiring talent, and expanded research and development.”
Tim Cook’s legacy as CEO can be summed up with the word “profitability.” He’ll be remembered as overseeing Apple during its transition to being a boring economic pillar, making incremental changes that enriched shareholders first and foremost, and rewarding investors with stock buybacks and larger dividends. Apple became a world-historically rich company, and he was basically saying “we have nothing to spend some of this money on. Take it.”
But when Gurman implies that Apple employees could soon be relieved to be getting their hands on R&D cash, that’s a little puzzling given Apple’s recent history. Cook was spending on R&D. It just often didn’t go well, and serious pain never ensued, perhaps because the macroeconomic environment throughout his tenure didn’t exactly force him to play the game on hard mode.
After all, he led Apple during the dual zero-interest-rate policy (ZIRP) periods of the post-financial crisis and late Covid pandemic. Apple’s quixotic effort to create a car, which started in 2014 and ended in 2024, is perhaps the prototypical story of wild tech spending that went nowhere in the post-iPhone, pre-AI era. Cook also put the Apple name on a $3,500 VR headset that no one bought.
That’s R&D money that could have been funneled to shareholders, and was, in a sense, wasted, but borrowing money was free during much of this era, and maybe shareholders feel like there’s honor in taking big swings.
Gurman writes that in addition to R&D, Apple could “spring for a blockbuster acquisition,” or “expand the company’s AI infrastructure — something its Silicon Valley peers are doing at a furious pace.” Apple’s recent missteps with its new, AI-enabled Siri revamp are notorious, and its need to rent a model from Google to power it was certainly embarrassing. Perhaps Apple will seek to buy its way to a position as an AI contender.
But commentary abounds on how smart Apple looks for not blowing its money on AI specifically. Gurman’s own Bloomberg colleague Dave Lee wrote last week that Apple has thus far avoided gold rush thinking while its sales have benefitted from all those feverish AI prospectors. Its “strongest strategy in AI is to make sure it remains the pick and shovel of choice,” Lee wrote.
Maybe, in other words, Apple will venture off the beaten track to innovate under Ternus. Remember that rumor that Apple was figuring out how to monitor people’s blood without needles? Now that’s some R&D that could get people excited about technology again.
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