During the coronavirus pandemic, many IT companies were actively developing and expanding their staff. But recently, that period of rapid growth has been replaced by a period of decline, and mass layoffs have begun at almost all companies in this industry.
For a while, Apple was one of the few companies that managed to stay away from this trend. However, it seems that the company will soon have to cut several jobs. Moreover, recently Apple's business is not doing well. Recently, the company even had to stop the production of M2 processors for its notebooks and PCs for two months, and after resuming production, Apple cut its volumes in half, which clearly indicates the very poor sales performance of Mac devices.
Cuts at Apple: Some employees will still be laid off
Apple's management explained the absence of the need for massive layoffs with a rather modest pace of hiring new employees during the pandemic. Like many other companies, Apple also had to think about reducing costs during the recession, but to do so, the company began to terminate contracts with contractors, stopped the process of hiring new employees and postponed the implementation of some less important projects.
Apparently, these measures were not enough, and now, according to Bloomberg, the company will still have to fire a number of employees of the branded retail network. Until the end of this week, those specialists who will fall under the reduction will have the opportunity to apply to move to other divisions of Apple. And those who will not be able to work in other departments of the company will receive compensation in the amount of four months' salary.
According to experts, the reductions in Apple are unlikely to reach the scale that is observed in many other large IT companies today. According to the available data, for now it is only about a few or a few dozen employees. Against the backdrop of thousands of layoffs at Google, Amazon, Microsoft, and a number of other companies, this seems like a small thing.
Suspension of Apple M2 processor production
According to TechSpot, demand for the newest MacBooks has been so low lately that Apple has had to temporarily stop the production of the M2 series processors used in the new MacBook Pro, Mac mini, and MacBook Air.
Chips intended for Apple have been produced by the Taiwanese company TSMC for a long time. In 2023 In January, Apple ordered an indefinite freeze on CPU M2 production. As a result, the production line did not operate for two months, until 2023 March. After the restart, its work volume was reduced twice compared to March 2022.
Interestingly, there is little information about what happened, and the official reason for stopping the production of M2 chips is not known. The information about the decline in demand for Apple's MacBooks is also not particularly raised.
However, it is known that Apple's revenue in 2023 in the first quarter of the fiscal year (which ended on December 31, 2022) decreased by 5% compared to the same period last year. It was affected not only by the decline in sales of Mac computers and wearable devices, but also by problems with the supply of iPhones due to the outbreak of the coronavirus in Chinese factories.
At the same time, the company's revenue from iPad sales increased by 30%: consumers seem to like the new models. On the other hand, it could not compensate for the decline in Mac sales, especially since Apple did not release any new models at the end of 2022. Mac’s revenue last year was $7.7 billion against the $10.9 billion in the same period last year.
