Tim Cook: Apple 'Changes the World' Through its Products

In the interview, published just a day before Apple’s widely anticipated media event, Cook disagreed with an assertion that the company’s products are high margin:

Well it’s not high margin. I wouldn’t use that word. There’s a lot of companies that have much higher margins. We price for the value of our products. And we try to make the very best products. And that means we don’t make commodity kind of products. And we don’t disparage people that do; it’s a fine business model. But it’s not the business that we’re in.

But if you look across our product lines, you can buy an iPad today for under $300. You can buy an iPhone, depending upon which one you select, for in that same kind of ballpark. And so these are not for the rich. We obviously wouldn’t have over a billion products that are in our active installed base if we were making them for the rich because that’s a sizable number no matter who’s looking at the numbers.

The magazine ranked Apple No. 3 in a new 2017 list of companies that change the world. Cook said along with its products, Apple changes the world through a number of areas including the company itself, human rights, education, and privacy.

Cook also noted that the Apple Watch is just the beginning of the company’s interest in the health field:

There’s much more in the health area. There’s a lot of stuff that I can’t tell you about that we’re working on, some of which it’s clear there’s a commercial business there. And some of it it’s clear there’s not. And some of it it‘s not clear. I do think it’s a big area for Apple’s future.