Tim Cook: Running Apple ‘is sort of a lonely job’

On a sleek white coffee table in Apple CEO Tim Cook’s fourth-floor office in late July, beneath framed posters of Robert F. Kennedy, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and Jackie Robinson, a rose gold iPhone 6s sits in its original box.

Earlier that morning, Cook had stood in front of employees at Apple headquarters and held up the phone, which a staffer had hand-delivered from a store in Beijing to commemorate a notable occasion: Apple had sold its billionth iPhone. That celebratory milestone — Cook laughs when asked by a reporter if he’ll stop counting, as McDonald’s did with its hamburgers — aptly coincides with another big moment for the technology giant’s chief executive, the Washington Post reports.

A few weeks later, Cook would mark the fifth anniversary of what has been the most closely watched transition of power in corporate history: On Aug. 24, 2011, just six weeks before his death, Apple’s iconic founder, Steve Jobs, permanently handed his chief operating officer the reins. “It’s been a blur in a lot of ways,” says Cook, who had filled in for Jobs during medical leaves. “It feels like it was yesterday in some respects.”

It is fitting that these two milestones arrive so close together. That’s because the iPhone, launched by Jobs, has been the biggest driver of Apple’s massive growth during Cook’s tenure. It led the company to soaring valuations and accounted for nearly two-thirds of Apple’s revenue in the past year. Just the tally on iPhone sales, almost $141 billion over the past four quarters, is more than the annual sales figures of Cisco, Disney and Nike — combined.

But the iPhone has also been a source of recent disappointment, too. In its most recent quarter, iPhone sales fell 23 percent from a year ago, contributing to a 14.6 percent drop in overall revenue. It was Apple’s second straight quarterly drop in sales after 13 years of growth.