Emmet Oliver on business: Apple, CRH and the banks

Apple needs to move into an era where the iPhone is just another product of many it sells

Tim Cook, chief executive of Apple, with a worker at Foxconn in Zhengzhou in China: unit labour costs in China aren’t what they used to be

Is Apple, like John Lewis, destined to be relevant only at Christmas? The Californian giant is desperately trying to inject new features into the iPhone category for this year’s holiday season in response to the two faultlines criss-crossing its business. One is the stagnancy of iPhone sales and the other is the company’s dependence on China (a market it needs for sales, but also for manufacturing via its contractor Foxconn).

Chief executive Tim ...