Apple COO Williams won't say whether the 5G 2020 iPhone 12 models will arrive late
Apple is not a work-at-home kind of company notes Williams
For Apple to continue churning out products during the pandemic, its supply chain will need to be running normally. Williams says, “You know, our supply chains are running largely at capacity, and people are continuing to work. I couldn’t be prouder of the Apple team and how resourceful they’ve been. You’ll see us opening retail stores in the coming weeks and like I said, we’re bullish in the long haul.” But Williams is not an economist as he points out. So he says that he is wearing his COO hat when making this forecast; most company executives are always a bit more optimistic about the future.
Williams was asked about the contradictory reports regarding the unveiling and release of the 5G 2020 iPhone 12 series. Some analysts are expecting a traditional September release of the first 5G iPhone models later this year while others expect a delay of one to three months. There are even a small number of analysts who don’t see the new handsets launching until early next year. Apple’s COO says that the company ignores the noise and simply keeps looking ahead. As Williams puts it, “We just put our head down and don’t pay a lot of attention to the latest sort of speculation about our products. We put our head down and get our work done. I couldn’t be prouder of the team finding new ways to get their job done. We’re not typically a work-at-home kind of culture at Apple, it’s not part of our playbook. And people have been really resourceful and we’re moving the ball forward. We are getting stuff done.”
Williams was given the COO job on December 17, 2015, and he wanted to correct a misconception that Apple’s device production relies on its contract manufacturers in China. “Our products are global products and so… they aren’t built in one location. There’s a real misconception about that. And our products are built around the world, with a ton of that right here in the United States. I see we’ll have a global supply chain for quite some time and that’s going to allow us to make the very best products for our customers.”