14 DAY TRIAL // Goldman Sachs analyst Bill Shope conducted an interview with Apple CEO Tim Cook as part of the firm’s Technology and Internet Conference, where Cook revealed to shareholders that Apple is heavily invested in iCloud and Siri.
Asked by Shope “How important is Siri and iCloud to Apple going forward?”, Tim Cook didn’t hesitate one second and replied: “Siri and iCloud are profound.”
Offering a brief history of Apple trying to unify the user’s computing experience, Apple’s CEO continued, “If you take iCloud -- rewind 10 years. Steve announced the strategy for Apple as the hub for someone's digital life. Out of that we developed iLife. You could connect many gadgets off of this and sync all of your music and photos. You can edit photos and movies. The Mac becomes the repository.”
“iCloud turns that on its head,” Cool said.
“It recognizes that in the last 2-3 years, we live off multiple devices. It's no longer a great customer experience to have to sync your iPad to your Mac and then your iPhone to your Mac and then resync your iPad to your Mac. This is a hair-pulling exercise. iCloud recognizes the Mac or PC as just another device and now your life is a lot easier,” said Apple’s boss.
Cook confirmed to Shope that Apple currently has 100 million iCloud subscribers. During the company’s quarterly earnings call held on January 24th, Cook revealed that Apple had roughly 85 million iCloud users. In other words, the company has racked up around 15 million in the last three weeks.
“We have 100 million users of iCloud -- we just launched it in October! This is unbelievable. I view iCloud not as something with a year or two product life -- it's a strategy for the next decade or more. It's truly profound,” Cook remarked.
As for Siri, Cook believes it will mark the revolution of user input.
“Siri is another profound change in input. All of us wanted this to work, it's sort of having a video call with FaceTime -- AHA! It can work! -- Siri is still a beta product, but now I feel like I can't live without it,” he said.
Talking about both iCloud and Siri, Cook concluded “Both of these things go in the profound category. They're things that you'll talk to your grandkids about that are profound changes.”