Apple Reportedly Cutting 100 Jobs in Crucial Services Division

Apple is reportedly eliminating around 100 jobs in its crucial digital services division.

The cuts are part of a shift in priorities for the unit, Bloomberg News reported late Tuesday (Aug. 27), citing sources with knowledge of the matter.

Among the cuts are workers in engineering roles, with the biggest layoffs happening in the Apple Books app and Apple Bookstore, as well as the services team behind Apple News. The report says Apple Books has become a lower priority for the tech giant. However, sources told Bloomberg that the cuts to the news division isn’t a signal that it’s become less important.

PYMNTS has contacted Apple for comment but has not yet gotten a reply.

The report notes that layoffs are pretty rare for Apple. However, the company has made a few rounds of cuts this year. 

Apple in April cut 614 jobs, its largest round of layoffs since the pandemic. The company also laid off hundreds of employees when it wound down its connected car effort, and recently shut down a team in San Diego.

The services division has been a revenue driver for Apple, with CEO Tim Cook saying on an earnings call earlier this month that revenues for the unit had climbed 14% in the latest quarter to $24.2 billion as paid subscriptions reached a record high. 

As PYMNTS wrote, that growth rate matched the fiscal second quarter and marked an acceleration from the 11% pace seen earlier in the year. Cook also noted that Apple had seen record revenue “in the majority” of services categories, pointing to advertising, cloud and payment services.

In other Apple news, PYMNTS recently examined the company’s pending artificial intelligence (AI) roll-out, and what that means for its mobile wallet Apple Pay.

“There’s a huge opportunity for Apple to change consumer spending behavior and take its mobile wallet to the next level by integrating it into its core AI strategy,” Darryl Cumming, director of product management at payments solutions company NMI, told PYMNTS. “OpenAI is only the beginning.”

Combining AI with Apple Pay could usher in more intuitive, context-aware financial experiences, that report said.  Potential features include AI-fueled budgeting advice, real-time spending analysis and even predictive purchasing based on consumer habits.

“We should expect consumer choices in the Apple universe to be amplified and channeled into more App Store purchases and commerce personalization,” Cumming said.