Apple Announces Job Cuts Across Sales Team In Rare Layoff

Apple said on Monday it is cutting jobs across its sales teams to strengthen its customer engagement efforts, noting that only a small number of roles will be impacted by the layoffs. The impacted employees include account managers serving major businesses, schools and government agencies, who, according to Bloomberg News, were informed by the management over the past few weeks.

“To connect with even more customers, we are making some changes in our sales team that affect a small number of roles,” an Apple spokesperson was quoted as saying in the report. “We are continuing to hire and those employees can apply for new roles.”

Staff who operate Apple's briefing centres for institutional meetings and product demonstrations for prospective customers were also affected, Bloomberg said. One of the major targets of the layoffs was a government sales team working with agencies, including the US Defense Department and Justice Department, per the report.

The team had already been facing tough conditions after the 43-day government shutdown and cutbacks imposed by the Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, Bloomberg added.

Apple is one of the few companies deemed immune to job cuts, especially when its peers, such as Meta, Amazon, Microsoft, and Google's parent company, Alphabet, have been laying off staff intermittently to restructure their teams in response to growing AI demand and an economic slowdown.

The layoffs also come days after Apple announced it had reached $140 billion in sales in the December quarter, a new record that bolsters the company's market valuation under its chief executive Tim Cook. The latest iPhone 17 and iPhone 17 Pro devices have been crucial to this growth, even though Apple's AI efforts have yet to fully bear fruit.

In the past few weeks, companies including Verizon, Synopsys, and IBM have announced job cuts.

— With inputs from Reuters

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