Apple's No. 2 left: iPhone pricing may be due to her

As detailed in a regulatory filing in February, Apple's senior vice president of retail, Angela Ahrendts, will leave the company today, with April 15th, local time in the United States, being her last day at Apple.

In early February, Apple announced that Angela Ahrendts would step down after five years in office and would no longer serve as Apple's senior vice president of retail business. She plans to leave in April this year and will be replaced by Deirdre O'Brien in the future. Deirdre O'Brien was Apple's senior vice president of human resources, but her current title is senior vice president of retail business and human resources because she needs to maintain her current responsibilities while taking over the Apple Store retail store and online store business.

Over the weekend, Apple removed Angela Ahrendts' profile from its leadership profile page in preparation for her departure.

At present, the outside world does not know the real reason for Angela Ahrendts's resignation. According to Apple's official statement, Angela Ahrendts left Apple to "continue to pursue new goals in personal and professional development." That's all. Apple did not further disclose the more detailed reasons for her resignation. However, the outside world speculates that Angela Ahrendts's resignation is related to the deterioration of Apple's performance, because at the time of her resignation, iPhone sales in China and some other emerging markets fell sharply.

Angela Ahrendts has been the head of the company's retail business since joining Apple in 2014. Over the past few years, she has been responsible for the innovation of Apple Store retail stores and online stores, including redesigning Apple Stores and improving customer experience, liberating the user experience from the traditional counter.

Under Ahrendts' leadership, Apple abandoned the well-known "Genius Bar" and replaced it with a more casual "Genius Grove". She reduced the sales of Apple's third-party accessories and turned its retail stores into gathering places for Apple's current teaching and artist performances, bringing a variety of new courses such as photography, art and design, and music, designed to help people unleash their creativity, inspire learning inspiration, and build interpersonal connections.

Before joining Apple, Angela Ahrendts was the CEO of the famous fashion company Burberry and was described as a "female devil" from the fashion industry. Before that, she also held positions at Liz Claiborne and Donna Karan. After Ahrendts joined Apple, Apple products gradually turned into luxury goods. In 2015, under Angela Ahrendts's concept, Apple launched the super expensive gold version of the Apple Watch to create a luxury watch style, but it was not successful.

In a letter to employees announcing Angela Ahrendts' departure, Apple CEO Tim Cook called her a positive, beloved and accomplished leader who played a "revolutionary role" in shaping the Apple retail experience. Apple currently has 35 online stores and 506 retail stores across five continents.

“Angela has been a tremendous source of inspiration and energy for our team over the past five years,” Cook said. “She has been instrumental in driving innovation both at Apple Stores and in the communities they serve.”

However, some analysts believe that although Angela Ahrendts was once considered as Cook's successor, as the head of Apple's retail business, she has a lot to do with the decline in iPhone sales. The new generation of iPhones is selling poorly because they are getting closer to luxury goods and are priced too high. Cook has been frank on many occasions and said that the failure of iPhone sales to meet expectations is related to the high price.

Retail is the cornerstone of Apple's success and an important part that cannot be easily replaced. Therefore, many analysts believe that Angela Ahrendts was most likely fired by Apple because she did not solve many problems in Apple's retail business, including the revenue part that Apple values ​​most, especially in Greater China and India, where the growth should have been the fastest. Most of the improvements made by Angela in Apple's retail business in the past five years were superficial without any fundamental changes. The after-sales culture of Apple Store, which was originally proactive in handling problems, has also changed.

Of course, before Angela took office, the previous two Apple retail heads had made even less achievements. The last one was John Browett, who was poached from British retail giant Dixons, but he was fired after only a few months because he had difficulty adapting to the company culture. Speaking of Apple's retail culture, Jobs said at the beginning of opening the retail store that the job of the store employees was not to sell, but to enrich the lives of customers, and always through education. In other words, Jobs hoped to bring an experiential retail.

However, Cook's core job is to improve iPhone sales. Therefore, Deirdre O'Brien, who has worked at Apple for 30 years, has carried out a series of strategic adjustments after taking over the Apple Store retail and online store business. The most critical point is to reduce the price of iPhone. It turns out that this strategy is quite effective. In China, iPhone sales have increased rapidly due to the "three rounds of price cuts".

Recently, Morgan Stanley analyst Katy Huberty said in an investment report that Apple has achieved year-on-year growth in its smartphone installation base for the third consecutive month, and the growth of iPhone users in China in March was the best in the past 15 months.

Finally, in your opinion, how do you weigh Angela Ahrendts' merits and demerits during her tenure at Apple? Is she primarily responsible for the iPhone's high pricing and declining sales? Did she really part ways with Apple peacefully? Can iPhone sales get back on track after Deirdre O'Brien takes over?