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| Tim Cook has filled the boots of an icon. PHOTO: John Gress / Reuters |
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First, some minor housekeeping. Apple Inc. is not worth one trillion dollars in the strictest sense of the word; rather, its market capitalisation passed that milestone. This refers to the value of Apple's outstanding shares on the stock market (valued at $207 at time of publishing). Stock valuations are greater-than-the-sum-of-the-parts because they of course take into account the prospect of future earnings as well.
Just weeks ago it seemed likely that Amazon would be the first company to hit this mark. But today Amazon's market cap trails Apple's by $120b. Apple passed the arresting (if arbitrary) figure on Tuesday following the release of its 3rd fiscal quarter numbers. The numbers were handsome indeed. June-quarter revenue was $53.3b - up 17% on the previous year - thanks largely to the iPhone X. This, combined with the announcement of a $20b buyback saw the share price jump 9%.
When the iPhone was first released it changed the way we live our lives. Mobile phones, which previously served a single narrowly-defined purpose, vaulted into prominence in almost every aspect of our daily lives. Indeed, it is estimated that the average person checks their phone more than a hundred times each day. There is a reason why Apple has sold one billion iPhones.
To be fair, not every Apple product has been a runaway success. But the tenth iteration of its iconic phone certainly has. With the release of the iPhoneX Apple managed to drag the price-point (and our willingness to pay for its products) higher once again. Which is why, despite the fact that sales have remained slightly below expectation, revenue has continued to climb steeply. Interestingly, Samsung has sold more smartphones that Apple for years. And now Huawei has pushed Apple down into third place by sales volume. But the team at Cupertino are experts in extracting more money from their customers than just about any other organisation. 56% of company revenue came from iPhones.
Chief Executive Officer Tim Cook agreed that the trillion-dollar valuation was a 'milestone'. But he was also quick to insist that this is not a focus for the company. The sensible soundbite is par-for-the-course from a man who many assumed would preside over the death of the company founded by Jobs, Wozniak and Wayne. His detractors were correct in assuming that Cook wouldn't introduce new paradigm-altering hardware products into the market. But that hasn't mattered one bit; Cook has cannily steered Apple further into the software space and turned the Apple Store, Apple Music and Apple Pay into massive money-spinners.
While its wearable tech products continue to perform strongly it has become clear that in recent years Apple has been more a company of improvements than of innovations. Many fans still wait with bated breath for an expected foray into new hardware territory, such as television. But software-led augmented reality and artificial intelligence are the more likely paths to growth and innovation for the company.
In other big tech news, Google too made headlines this week when a new pro-censorship search engine was announced for China. Just eight years after Google pulled out of the PRC on ostensibly moral grounds, it is back. The new mobile-first browser will blacklist sensitive queries and automatically disable access to anything that Beijing's regulators deem unsavoury. The company is also believed to be creating a similarly censored 'news' app for the Chinese market.
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| Expect this storm to last well beyond the midterms. PHOTO: Josh Edelson / AFP |
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This week Facebook announced that it had uncovered a coordinated effort to influence American voters ahead of the upcoming midterm elections. As Yogi Berra would have said, this is déjà vu all over again. In a phone conversation Facebook COO Sheryl Sandberg this week assured reporters that the social network had acted quickly to remove 32 accounts and pages that were pushing divisive political messages. One of the groups mentioned was promoting the imminent Unite The Right rally (the same rally that last year in Charlottesville resulted in the murder of an anti-fascist demonstrator). The accounts had a total of 290,000 followers and had spent over $10,000 on political advertisements.
Sandberg may have been tight-lipped on the question of who was responsible, but the US government certainly wasn't: senior White House advisors have unequivocally blamed the Kremlin. It's eminently sensible to assume that America's adversaries are engaging in the same disruptive tactics that the US itself engages in. And one can see why. A quick survey of the current tumult in Washington makes clear that such disruption works.
Given that this kind of electoral manipulation is fast becoming the rule rather than the exception - what is to be done? Facebook has doubled its number of human editors to 20,000; these poor souls see, scour and delete all day long. Yet the extremism and offensiveness that they focus on is less helpful in this case. As advertising becomes more effective in influencing our opinions and views, malicious actors will be able to use this capability in subtle ways to influence a malleable public; inflaming fears and hatreds that already exist.
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| Indians line up to check if they are still citizens. PHOTO: AFP / Getty |
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The northeastern states of India are a cartographical quirk, at a quick glance they barely seem Indian at all. These states are far further east than Kolkata - sandwiched in-between Bangladesh, Myanmar, China and Bhutan - connected to the rest of the country by a narrow land bridge. Nestled amongst these states is Assam, a verdant province of rivers best known for its tea plantations.
This week lawmakers in Assam released a new draft of the National Register of Citizens (NRC). It was a mammoth three-year undertaking to update the register of who is and isn't an Indian citizen. There are four million names missing. Overnight these millions, mostly Bengali-speaking Muslims, became aliens in the country they call home. This NRC update specifically sought to excise anyone who could not unearth roots in Assam prior to March 1971. The state has a multi-ethnic and multi-lingual society yet this group is viewed with considerable distrust.
The relationship between the state of Assam and its Bengali-speaking Muslims is fraught, just as it is in neighbouring Meghalaya, Nagaland and Manipur. While the animosity stretches back as far as Partition, it snowballed after the birth of Bangladesh in 1971. Prior to that Bangladesh was known as East Pakistan, a distant and disparate half-country ruled from Islamabad. This untenable arrangement (a country bisected by a much larger, agonistic one) ended in disaster. Calls for Bangladeshi independence were met with a wave of genocidal violence by West Pakistan; at least three million people were murdered over the course of 1971. Hundreds of thousands had fled to Assam and did not return after India intervened on the side of Bangladeshi insurgents. |
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| ZANU-PF wins. PHOTO: Philimon Bulawayo / Reuters |
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- Ex-army chief Emerson Mnangagwa claimed victory in Zimbabwe's first post-Mugabe election; the result was violently contested
- A bad week for the Catholic Church: an American cardinal and an Australian archbishop resigned over child sex abuse allegations
- Donald Trump spontaneously extended the olive branch to his Iranian counterpart; he was rebuffed by both Rouhani and his own team
- Cambodian dictator Hun Sen won all 125 seats up for grabs in the national election; it's no surprise given that he ran more or less unopposed
- The murder of three journalists in the Central African Republic has been blamed on the Russian mercenary army they were reporting on
- New details emerged about Qatar's controversy-dogged bid for the 2022 FIFA World Cup; Doha's use of ex-CIA propagandists
- Britain hurtled closer toward a 'no-deal' Brexit after EU negotiators refused to soften their stance
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Hundreds of hikers were rescued from an active volcano after being stranded during this weeks Lombok earthquake
- The final report into the disappearance of flight MH370 was vague, disappointing and of little consolation to the families of those lost
- Hundreds of Islamic State fighters handed themselves over to the Afghan government after losing a two-day battle against the Taliban
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| It's not quite 'Oz'. PHOTO: Andreas Solaro AFP |
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New Zealand has moved to tackle sky-high rates of mental illness amongst its prison population with a brand new facility outside Auckland. The detention centre for high- and maximum-security males is looking to swing the pendulum back from punishment towards rehabilitation. It places emphasis on time spent outdoors in meditation, yoga, and gardens (that the inmates will tend to). This is a markedly more humane approach to dealing with the staggering 90% of NZ prisoners who carry a lifelong diagnosis of mental illness or addiction. Bravo.
Tuberculosis is responsible for just over 2% of all deaths worldwide. In 2016 it claimed 1.6 million lives. But it's long been understood that the course of isoniazid required to curb tuberculosis is prohibitively expensive, lengthy and damaging. While a 9-month course of the invasive drug is recommended, many health groups cut that in half because of the eye-watering costs and associated liver-damage. Now a breakthrough in treatment (tested in both adults and children) has surfaced a far safer drug - rifampin. Shorter courses, safer for the liver, and cheaper. More excellent news for the quarter of the global population who carry latent tuberculosis.
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| Climate change is exacerbating California's wildfires. PHOTO: Mark Ralston / AFP |
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The push for a carbon tax in the United States is coming from an unexpected quarter: the oil industry. But as one might well expect from oil lobbyists, there are strings attached. The companies are lending their support for the much-needed policy in exchange for immunity from lawsuits that take them to task for the effects of climate change. The trade-off comes as lawsuits stack up against corporations like ExxonMobil on the east coast of America. ExxonMobil of course commissioned research into the effects of climate change four decades ago but then ran interference on the science community. When it comes to environmental degradation it seems the buck will stop nowhere.
Ex-Timor-Leste President José Ramos-Horta has called on Australia to release a whistleblower from indefinite detention. Successive Australian governments have been perfectly happy to sit on the case of Witness K and his lawyer Bernard Collaery. The witness in question - unidentified other than by the suitably Kafkaesque designation 'K' - blew the whistle on flagrantly illegal behaviour undertaken by Australia's overseas spy agency. The infraction? Bugging the cabinet rooms of Timor-Leste's fledgling government in 2004. The aim? To gain the edge in negotiations over a maritime boundary that resulted in Australia receiving the lion's share of a huge natural gas deposit. Witness K was banned from giving evidence in the Hague, had his passport taken, and has been under home custody since 2012.
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Featured long-reads from inkl publishers:
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Financial Times ponders when China's looming debt issues will come home to roost
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Bloomberg Business shines a light on how US drug companies are now providing charity to communities that they hooked on opioids
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Bloomberg Businessweek probes why Ukraine is still a mess some four years after its revolution
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Quote of the week...
“The Mating Habits of Bigfoot and Why Women Want Him” - The title of an unpublished Bigfoot-erotica text written by US congressional hopeful Denver Riggleman. Equally humorous is the the fact that his pedigreed opponent for Virginia's 5th District, Leslie Cockburn, is a relation of one Sir George Cockburn. The very same British Royal Navy admiral who put the White House and the Capitol building to torch during the War of 1812.
What to watch next week
Yet another ebola outbreak has been declared in the Democratic Republic of Congo. This latest comes just days after the last outbreak was declared beaten.
And one last thing
You can get the world's best news coverage for just 3 cents per day. That's essential news, without ads, clickbait or paywalls. So do it now if you haven't already.
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