The NYT recently issued a report that talked to current and previous execs at Apple and at Chinese factories. The claims allege that Apple and others knowingly work with Foxconn even though workers often complain about conditions.

Cook wrote:

“As a company and as individuals, we are defined by our values. Unfortunately, some people are questioning Apple’s values today, and I’d like to address this with you directly. We care about every worker in our worldwide supply chain. Any accident is deeply troubling, and any issue with working conditions is cause for concern. Any suggestion that we don’t care is patently false and offensive to us. As you know better than anyone, accusations like these are contrary to our values. It’s not who we are.
For the many hundreds of you who are based at our suppliers’ manufacturing sites around the world, or spend long stretches working there away from your families, I know you are as outraged by this as I am. For the people who aren’t as close to the supply chain, you have a right to know the facts.
Every year we inspect more factories, raising the bar for our partners and going deeper into the supply chain. As we reported earlier this month, we’ve made a great deal of progress and improved conditions for hundreds of thousands of workers. We know of no one in our industry doing as much as we are, in as many places, touching as many people” Tim Cook, CEO Apple

[via SlashGear]

Could the iPhone 4S be a free smartphone? Chris burns over at SlashGear thinks so. How dominating would the iPhone be if it were offered for free?

You would have to live under a rock to not know Steve Jobs resigned as CEO at Apple this week and named Tim Cook as his replacement. Cook has sent an email to Apple workers to assure them things will continue as they are at Apple.

Tim Cook (left) & Steve Jobs (right)

This Q&A session is available for streaming via QuickTime from Apple’s website. However, AppleInsider transcribed the portion of Mr. Cook’s speech relating to the iPhone for your reading pleasure. For this we thank AppleInsider.

Q: Almost from the second Steve stepped off the stage at Macworld there are people in the press and other people basically coming up with reasons why Apple can’t succeed in the phone market. Can you talk a little bit about why you think Apple will be a success?

A: Well, I think the iPhone is a revolutionary product. And Steve mentioned this at Macworld. And I think this is a very, very good point. Revolutionary products only come along so often. You know, Apple had the Macintosh in 1984 that reinvented the personal computer industry. The iPod in 2001 which reinvented the whole music industry. And we think the iPhone is that class product for the cell phone industry.

Step back and look at the [iPhone] and think about what it is. It’s a very small, thin, lightweight device. It’s a revolutionary cell phone. It has visual voicemail, which if you’re not familiar with that, essentially looks like e-mail. So you can select precisely the voicemail that you want to hear, not the order they happen to come in. It’s the best iPod Apple has ever done. And it’s this really cool internet device that has desktop class email, browsing, maps and searching, all in one product. And so I think people are going to be amazed and delighted over it. So we’ll have to see. Obviously there are people who would prefer us not to be successful in this. But I think this is a revolutionary product. And we’ll see what customers think because that is the most important thing.

Q: Your stated goal for calendar 2008 is to ship 10 million units, which is about 1 percent of the overall market. But given the functionality and price-point of the product, it eliminates most of the low end of the market. How do you look at the available market for the first-generation of iPhone and what kind of market share do you think you could take in that market?

A: The traditional way that all of us were taught in business school to look at a market was, you look at the products you are selling. You look at the price bands that are curving the market. You think about the price band that your product is in. You assume that you can get a percentage of it. And that is kinda how you get to the addressable market.

The rest of the transcript can be found at Apple COO chats about iPhone, 3G, and the Cingular partnership [Apple Insider]

Cook reiterated Jobs words from Macworld Expo that Apple expects to sell 10 million iPhones in 2008. Attendees at the Goldman Sachs 2007 Technology Investment Symposium Conference raised concerns about whether the iPhone would cut into the iPod territory, Cook said that iPod “is being sold for a wide variety of uses. We’ll see what happens.”

He also bragged that Apple has sold 90 million iPods since October 2001.

Apple COO: iPhone on track for June launch [Business Journal]