Apple penalized CEO Tim Cook for the iPhone maker’s first sales slump in 15 years with a 15 percent pay cut.
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Cook [seen here] still did extremely well, with a compensation package valued at $8.7 million for Apple’s fiscal year that ended Sept. 24, according to a regulatory filing made Friday. But the amount was down from nearly $10.3 million in the prior year.
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The Cupertino, California, company cited a downturn in Apple’s revenue and operating profit as the main reason it cut the pay of Cook and its other top executives.
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Apple’s revenue dropped 8 percent to $216 billion, while its operating profit declined 16 percent to $60 billion. That was mainly because it sold fewer iPhones for the first time since the device came out in 2007.
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It also marked the first time that Apple’s annual revenue decreased since 2001, which was just before the company’s late co-founder and CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the iPod. That digital music player set the stage for the iPhone and iPad.
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The iPhone triggered a revolution in mobile computing and became Apple’s biggest moneymaker, even as a wide range of device makers released competing products primarily running on Google’s free Android software. Most of the world’s smartphones are powered by Android, but the iPhone remains a popular high-priced status symbol.
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Even so, consumers are holding on to their existing iPhones for longer periods instead of upgrading to a newer model every year or two. That has raised investor concerns that Apple has become too dependent on the iPhone, a nagging worry that has been aggravated by the company’s inability to introduce another breakthrough product since Jobs’ death in 2011.
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Cook, Jobs’ anointed successor, had hoped Apple would have another huge hit with a smartwatch unveiled in 2014, but that device has only had moderate success.
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Apple’s regulatory filing revealed that…