Apple held their annual shareholder meeting today. MercuryNews provides some notes on the meeting. Investors passed a proposal asking the company to allow investors to have an advisory vote on executive compensation.
"It's a great vote," said Scott Adams, a research coordinator at the American Federation of State, County and Municipal Employees, a member of the AFL-CIO, which sponsored the proposal. Even though Apple is "a great company, shareholders still want a say on pay," he added.
The board can choose to accept or ignore the proposal. In general the mood seems to have been positive, with a few common questions being addressed:
- Jobs and executives, of course, would not comment on future products or plans.
- Jobs confirmed that they were expecting to sell 10 million iPhones in 2008.
- Apple does plan on offering the iPhone in China and India "one day".
- Jobs stated he is "not happy about" the fact that they were unable to meet the 1000 movies on iTunes goal by the end of February. Jobs blamed the delay on movie studios getting the necessary approvals from various rights holders of each film.
- No plans to offer dividends or buy back stock.
- Regarding Steve Jobs' successor, he sees many possible candidates amongst Apple's current executives.
"We've got great talent, and I think the board would have a few really good choices," said Jobs, 53. "We talk about that a lot." Candidates include Cook and Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer, he said.
