Apple Watch Business Big Enough to be a Fortune 300 Company, Says Tim Cook

Tim Cook may not be a large fan of the give-and-take 'wearables', only Apple is still selling enough of the stuff to business relationship for nigh a third of all sales in the category globally. This was revealed yesterday at Apple tree's latest shareholders meeting where Cook said that Apple Lookout sales alone is approaching the size of a Fortune 300 visitor. He had earlier compared the size of the company's Watch business to that of a Fortune 500 visitor, and even said that the Apple Store by itself is big enough to be a Fortune 100 visitor.

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I interesting thing to note here is that Cook did non reveal the verbal number of Apple Watches sold, nor the amount of revenues generated from the device. Apple Lookout sales was lumped together with other products in Apple tree's financials when the company had appear its Q4 results earlier this month, although Canalys has since revealed that that the Cupertino-based tech behemothic had shipped 18 million Apple Watches in 2017, representing a 54 percentage YoY increase in a market that continues to cater to a niche audience for the nigh part.

While Apple Lookout man shipments crush market expectations, Apple Pay has been a bit of a disappointment, with Melt admitting that, "Mobile payments accept taken off slower than I would have thought". While growth in emerging markets similar People's republic of china and Russia has been impressive, the built-in transit integration has helped the platform gain some traction in developed economies, such every bit Japan and the Great britain.

Some other interesting fact to accept come out from the shareholder meeting is that Apple caused xix companies final twelvemonth and is on the scout for more this twelvemonth. The company likewise announced that information technology spent $12 billion on R&D in 2017, and expects to add together nearly twenty,000 new employees in 2018.