Apple lays off 100 workers from its Apple News and Apple Books apps
Apple has taken the rare step of laying off around 100 people from its digital services division, including the Apple News and Apple Books apps, as the iPhone maker reshuffles its priorities to focus more on artificial intelligence, according to a report.
The affected employees, among them several engineers, were informed 💛of the🌞 decision on Tuesday,
Apple Books, which lets users buy and download e-books and audiobooks, is considered less of a prioritꦗy at the Cupertino, Calif.-based tech giant, people familiar with the matter told Bloomberg N🍨ews.
The layoffs also affected personnel at Apple News, the news aggregation app that curates articles from various publishers into a single, personalized feed — though sources told Bloomberg that the service remains a priority for the company.
Affected 🌠workers were told they have 60 days to find another position within the company before being terminated.
Appleꦏ declined to comment on the Bloomberg News report.
The company had app🎶roximately 161,000 full-time equivalent employees as of Sept. 30, 2023, according to its latest ꦚannual report.
Apple, the world’s richest company with a market cap of $3.47 trillion, has rarely had layoffs in the past. This year, however, there have been at least four rounds of job cuts.
In the spring, Apple cut hundreds of jobs after it shut down its self-driving car project.
It has previously suspended work on its next high-end Vision headset and shuttered a project to design and develop its own smartwatch🦩 displays earlier this year, according to media reports.
Other tech companies have laid off workers on a✨ far greater scale than A💎pple.
Since the start of the year, tech companies worldwide have shed more than 134,000 jobs, according to the tr𒐪acker site
LinkedIn laid off 660 employees while Intel laid off mor⛦e than 15,000 workers.
Apple snapped out of a prolonged sales slump during its most recent quarter as the trendsetting company prepares to launch into the artificial intelligence craze with an arsenal of new technol🐼ogy that’s expected to juice demand for its next iPhone.
The fiscal third-quarter results announced earlier this month covered an April-June period that’s typically a sluggish stretch for Apple as its loyal customer base awaits the next version o🍸f the iPhone that’s traditionally unveiled shortly after Labor Day.
Even so, Apple boosted its sales from a year ago — a welcome reversal of fortune on the hee꧟ls of five consecutive🎉 quarters of year-over-year revenue declines.
With Post wires
