JPMorgan Likes Apple's Management Changes

• Shares of Apple Inc. AAPL have been volatile in 2015, crossing the $130 mark several times, but down 1 percent year-to-date.
• JP Morgan’s Rod Hall mentioned that management changes announced by the company indicate an increase in focus on operations management and are positive.

Apple announced several positive changes to its management team, including the appointment of Jeff Williams as the new COO. Jeff, currently the SVP of Operations, has overseen Apple’s entire supply chain, service and support and the social responsibility initiatives since 2010.

Jeff has also played an important role in Apple’s entry into the mobile phone segment with the launch of the iPhone. Moreover, he has been supervising the development of the Apple Watch, analyst Rod Hall stated.

The company named Johny Srouji to its executive team. Srouji is SVP, Hardware Technologies and is responsible for Apple’s silicon efforts. After joining the company in 2008 to lead development of the A4, Srouji built the silicon and technology engineers teams, besides overseeing custom silicon and hardware technologies across the company’s entire product range.

“We see proprietary semiconductor design as a key element of the company’s ability to continue to differentiate its products in the future,” Hall wrote.

Apple announced that Phil Schiller, SVP of Worldwide Marketing, is taking over App Store. “The increased App Store focus is clearly needed, in our opinion, with recent criticisms of the Mac App Store in particular being at issue. We also believe the Apple TV App store offers significant potential and deserves additional management attention,” the JP Morgan report noted.