Apple CEO Tim Cook: ‘It Feels to Me China is Getting Coronavirus Under Control’

Apple CEO Tim Cook is in Birmingham, Alabama today, where he spoke at an event for EdFarm, which will offer Apple’s Everyone Can Code curriculum alongside civil rights education conducted through augmented reality.
Following his EdFarm speech, Cook did an interview with Fox Business. The interview is set to air in full on Friday, but in a clip shared today, Cook spoke about the impact of the coronavirus on Apple’s business.

According to Cook, he believes that China is starting to get the coronavirus under control, and that he is optimistic about things returning to normal.

It feels to me that China is getting the coronavirus under control. When you look at the numbers, they’re coming down day by day by day. And so I’m very optimistic there.

Cook says that Apple’s suppliers in China are getting back to work and that production is ramping up.

On the supplier side, we have suppliers, you know, iPhone is built everywhere in the world. We have key components coming from the United States, we have key parts that are in China, and so on and so forth. When you look at the parts that are done in China, we have reopened factories, so the factories were able to work through the conditions of opening. They’re also in ramp, so I think of this as sort of the third phase of getting back to normal and we’re in phase three of the ramp mode.

In the full interview set air on Friday, Cook will comment on the possibility of the coronavirus disruptions continuing past the second quarter of the year.Cook’s comments come two weeks after Apple announced that it would not meet its revenue goals for the March quarter due to store closures in China and supply issues. Apple is expected to share more information in its next earnings call, which is scheduled for April.