Apple shareholders accused Tim Cook of hiding information about falling iPhone demand
Tim Cook is unquestionably an effective leader who has made Apple one of the most successful companies. Nearly every Apple report shows the company’s revenue skyrocketing. However, shareholders accused Apple of hiding truthful information about the drop in iPhone sales.
This is the opinion of a number of the company’s shareholders, who accused the head of Apple of deceiving and deliberately concealing the decline in demand for smartphones. The UK’s main pension fund and several shareholders have sued Apple, claiming Cook misled them with his November 2018 statement. Then the head of Apple, in a conversation with analysts, denied information about a decrease in demand for the iPhone in China. But just days after that conversation, the company slashed its smartphone production, and on January 2, 2019, it announced a drop in forecast quarterly revenues to $ 9 billion.
Tim Cook then said that the reason for this was the strained relations between the United States and China. But since the company saw a slowdown in sales for the first time since 2007, the stock market responded with a 10% drop in Apple stock. The market value of the company fell to $ 74 billion and shareholders lost profits.
Apple and Tim Cook personally claim that the plaintiffs have no evidence that they were being tricked. However, the judge in charge of the case indicated that shareholders have reason to believe that Cook’s November 2018 statement was false and misleading.
