Apple Lays Off Around 100 Services Staff Across Apple Books and News

[MacRumors]

As part of a "shift in priorities," Apple has made cuts to its workforce across senior VP Eddy Cue's Services division, Bloomberg reports. About 100 employees impacted by the cuts were reportedly given a 60-day window to secure another position within Apple before their termination becomes effective.

The scope of the layoffs extended beyond a single team, with some employees working across multiple departments feeling the ripple effects of Apple's apparent cost-optimization effort. The layoffs primarily affected the Apple Books app and Apple Bookstore teams, but also impacted the Apple News team, marking the fourth round of staff reductions for the company in 2024.

According to the report, the layoffs signal that Apple Books has become less of a priority for the company, which doesn't see it as a major part of its services lineup. However, the Books app is still expected to get new features over time. As for Apple News, the layoffs were said to be an indication that it is less of a focus for Apple.

The Services division has been a key growth driver for the company in recent years. Services now account for over 22% of Apple's sales, a significant increase from less than 10% a decade ago.

The importance of the Services segment has been particularly evident during periods of slower device sales, helping to bolster Apple's financial performance. However, this latest move suggests that even high-performing divisions are not immune to restructuring efforts.

These layoffs follow earlier staff reductions at Apple this year, including the closure of its ambitious self-driving car project and the shutdown of a microLED display initiative. The company also dismantled a team based in San Diego.

Apple's approach to layoffs has been more measured compared to some of its Silicon Valley counterparts. Cisco Systems has announced plans to reduce its headcount by approximately 7%, while Intel is set to eliminate over 15% of its workforce. These more extensive cuts at other tech firms are largely attributed to slowing growth and a shift in focus towards AI.

Article Link: Apple Lays Off Around 100 Services Staff Across Apple Books and News

 

[S.B.G]

I never like to see anyone lose their jobs. I hope those folks can secure another job within the company, or find work elsewhere without too much trouble.

 

[HelmetFire]

This is spreading everywhere in tech apparently. Even in my little world the next cycle suggests a few positions may not be filled and a few cut...... announced yesterday. I'm not feeling positive about many economic indicators I see out there.

 

[WarmWinterHat]

This is spreading everywhere in tech apparently. Even in my little world the next cycle suggests a few positions may not be filled and a few cut...... announced yesterday. I'm not feeling positive about many economic indicators I see out there.

It may be happening in tech, but it's the opposite in other industries. I'm in healthcare and we have been increasing our hiring, not laying people off.

 

[Shirasaki]

This probably means Apple Books and Apple News don’t perform as well as Apple hoped, otherwise why cut workforce?
With that being said, time to branch out even more areas?

 

[Shirasaki]

It may be happening in tech, but it's the opposite in other industries. I'm in healthcare and we have been increasing our hiring, not laying people off.

Healthcare hiring more resonates with globally aging population. Once the population drops below a certain level (which I probably won‘t be able to see in my own eyes), healthcare hiring probably will slow down too.
With that being said, when will this laying off trend ever die down?

 

[tridley68]

Hopefully Apple higher ups don't all get big raises because these poor folks lost their jobs .

 

[sublunar]

They’re up against Kindle (for Books) here, and it’s not seen much promotion over the years. And the News side of things has seen a lot of big hitters withdraw, not a good deal from their point of view I’d wager - and getting content formatted for Apple News may be process intensive in an industry which is itself shrinking.

 

[antiprotest]

Apple hasn't been doing much with Books and I was hoping that it would do more, such as adding a subscription service like Kindle Unlimited. As for Apple News, it has been a good service for me.

 

[JosephAW]

AI will be replacing most of us in the next decade.

 

[btrach144]

It may be happening in tech, but it's the opposite in other industries. I'm in healthcare and we have been increasing our hiring, not laying people off.

Healthcare hiring more resonates with globally aging population. Once the population drops below a certain level (which I probably won‘t be able to see in my own eyes), healthcare hiring probably will slow down too.
With that being said, when will this laying off trend ever die down?

Honestly, it’s the new normal. I work for a major tech company and for the last decade, we have done layoffs at the start of our new FY in July. They claim it’s because we are starting a new FY and the jobs don’t fit into our vision.

But over the last 4 years, we’ve moved to layoffs every quarter.

After a decade of explosive growth in tech, a slowdown feels weird. They say things should get better in 2025 though, so hopefully just a few more months?

 

[Jamie0003]

Apple Books could have been so much more with apples hardware and software, but has been abandoned for a long while now.

Also seems mad they never bothered with an audible conpetitor

 

[iDento]

When Steve Jobs announced the iPad, it came with a better Books app. I could export highlights in bulk, now I can't. The options to change fonts, font size, brightness, and so were all easier.

So, is it a cost-cutting Timmie thing or was it because these particular services aren't doing well?

 

[StephanD88]

Apple Books has so much more potential.

First: experience wise. A couple of iOS updates back for example, your current book you were reading was the eye catcher of the home screen. Now the current book is a small tile and more focus on what you 'should' read next displayed way bigger under there. Focus on selling the next thing. Not a good experience in what you're reading right now. They need to bring the good experience back.

Second, they can indeed do more with for example subscription. Or make the experience like in real life: being able to lend your books to someone for a certain period, where it becomes unavailable to yourself (just like physical books). Benefit would be that someone else can experience reading a full book in Apple Books, which could lead them to buy an iPad Mini for example (which is the size of a book).

These are two things I miss

 

[Rogifan]

Mark Gurman should stick to reporting rumors, not guessing what they mean. He’s usually pretty bad at the latter. Unless he saw a memo or something outlining a change in strategy it seems he’s just guessing here. Apple is a big company. We don’t know how many people work in the services division. Is 100 people a big layoff?

 

[jwolf6589]

This probably means Apple Books and Apple News don’t perform as well as Apple hoped, otherwise why cut workforce?
With that being said, time to branch out even more areas?

I use Apple Books all the time and have more than 300 books.

 

[nt5672]

When Steve Jobs announced the iPad, it came with a better Books app. I could export highlights in bulk, now I can't. The options to change fonts, font size, brightness, and so were all easier.

So, is it a cost-cutting Timmie thing or was it because these particular services aren't doing well?

Look at amazon, it took decades to become profitable. But now amazon is ubiquitous. Timmy does not understand anything that does not generate $$$ today.

It would be nice if Apple would take an Apple app, or two, and make it best in class. But that would require time and $$$, something Timmy's lifestyle won't accept.

Nope, I fear we are stuck with Apple's, lets make barely working, low usability, buggy apps that have nice splash screens for the keynote innovative strategy.

 

[steve09090]

When Steve Jobs announced the iPad, it came with a better Books app. I could export highlights in bulk, now I can't. The options to change fonts, font size, brightness, and so were all easier.

So, is it a cost-cutting Timmie thing or was it because these particular services aren't doing well?

Or it’s established 'well enough' and they don’t need the moderation because of tech/AI advances.

The original iBooks was okay, but pretty disgusting looking (Thanks Forstall for the vomit inducing design) and I find it works pretty much as expected. Themes, fonts are all really easy to find (bottom right for me) and there are so many more settings to tweak the way I like it. The only thing I miss is the page turning style.

 

[nt5672]

I use Apple Books all the time and have more than 300 books.

Good luck with that when Apple shuts down the books servers in a few years.

 

[steve09090]

Good luck with that when Apple shuts down the books servers in a few years.

That would be entirely inconsistent with every thing they have ever done. So why would they? You might be thinking of Google values (if that were ever a thing), not Apples.

 

[lkrupp]

Apple has 161,000 U.S. employees and a 2 million+ worldwide job imprint. They tell 100 employees to find other jobs in the company and the peanut gallery erupts with claims of failure and anticapitalist rhetoric.

 

[CheffyDude]

I can tell you that without Apple Books, I don't need an iPad.

 

[Blackstick]

AI will be replacing most of us in the next decade.

Until it stops writing me shell scripts with C:\ paths where it assumes all our Macs have Powershell installed. It ain’t there yet 😜

 

[russell_314]

I’m guessing Apple figured they can do this mostly with AI without having to pay many people.

Apple news isn’t really Apple news, but rather an app that displays news from ABC, CBS, NBC, CNN, etc. That’s why I don’t pay for it because I can get real news for free. I’m guessing the “Apple news” staff decided where to put articles on your screen, but AI can do that

With Apple Books again they’re not writing books to my knowledge so it’s just other publications in digital format. Some type of staff might be required to approve or reject publications but again that’s probably an AI task.

Maybe if they took the page out of their Apple TV service and actually had original content these services would be more successful.

 

[johannnn]

60 days is very generous