Five problems that Apple has to solve: It is not just tariffs, App Store and AI

This time passed pretty quickly: Timothy Donald Cook, born on November 1, 1960 in Mobile, Alabama in the south of the United States, will have been a total of 15 years of CEO from Apple in August next year. He took over the post in August 2011 when Steve Jobs retired because of his long illness, which then died on October 5, 2011. Cook never had a simple job, but managed to give Apple enormous growth and to make the most valuable company in the US markets. Börsen legend Warren Buffett recently said that Cook had his investment company made more money than he himself. Nevertheless, complex problems are waiting for Cook until his anniversary in the coming year. Apparently Apple is going to its most important business models from all sides – and guilt is primarily the changed political landscape, but also technical progress. An overview of the five central problems that the Apple CEO must now tackle.

1. The big app store problem

Apple has been under legal pressure in its continuously growing service business for years. Regardless of whether in the EU, the USA or numerous other countries: Cartel guards and competitive keepers find that Apple has covered its regulations for developers. The group must allow alternative app stores and open its platforms, sometimes down to the smallest detail. In the United States, the sales via web link can no longer be hindered or proven with commissions. A feast for corporations such as Epic Games or Spotify who have been suing for a long time to pay Apple too much money.

2. The matter with the punitive tariffs

Apple produced almost all important products in China for many years. After the first Trump administration, the group started diversifying here. But Apple hit the US criminal offenses. As soon as either components are occupied or the planned 145 percent are reactivated (currently “Tahriff-Break”), Apple could have to start a larger price increase for its US customers.

3. Delays with good AI

Apple’s voice assistant Siri has been criticized for years and smiled. A lot should improve here as part of Apple Intelligence. So the voice assistant should understand the user context, be able to read the screen and carry out action in apps. All of this will be postponed to the next year – with luck next autumn. However, it is still not clear how Apple would like to compete with Chatbots: Siri will also be worse than chat assistants like Google Gemini or Chatgpt.

4. Google deal before the end

Apple has been doing (a lot) good money with a search deal that had been threaded with Google for years. The company is involved in the income for search advertising and thus receives around $ 20 billion a year. The problem: The contract (and similar of its kind) could be banned as part of a major lawsuit by the US Ministry of Justice. Not only Apple would suffer from this: the Firefox mother Mozilla also threatens the bankruptcy.

5. China remains difficult

In connection with the move of production and the increasingly aggressive trade war between the United States and China, business in the People’s Republic, once the second largest market for Apple, will continue to faith. Most recently, sales shrank more clearly than valued by Wall Street.

Conclusion: Tim Cook has a lot to do

As is shown, Apple is fighting with a number of problems. Sometimes they are homemade (AI, too aggressive app store regulations), sometimes they come from outside (Google lawsuit, China). In the past, however, CEO Cook had regularly shown how he succeeded in dealing with difficulties. For example, the iPhone faces completely new, exciting developments in the coming years – despite the fact that the technology has been on the market for almost 20 years.