most successful products in history. With the absence of a new mega product, the company remained focused on making incremental improvements to its hardware and software, and growing its services business, with the objective of increasing the number of paid subscriptions across its platforms to $500$ million, up from $360$ million in $2017.{?}^{31}$

In June $2019,$ Apple announced that its long$-$time chief design officer, Ive, was leaving the company and that the design team leaders would report to Jeff Williams, Apple's COO. ${?}^{32}$ One industry observer noted, "They built an organization to make beautiful gadgets and compete with Samsung and other gray$-$box manufacturers. Now, they have to really think about the services and software that have been so uneven and compete with a lot of very different competitors. ${?}^{,33}$

THE IPHONE SUPPLY CHAIN

In $2020,$ the iPhone global supply chain began with Apple's product development team in the United States and involved dozens of suppliers, assembly operations in China, multiple distribution channels, and thousands of retail outlets. Yet Apple maintained the ability to coordinate the iPhone supply chain on a realtime basis. ${?}^{34}$