Apple CEO Tim Cook visits Spain this weekend to meet with local teams, clients and creatives, all a day after the global launch of the iPhone 15. Cook has begun his visit in the Real Madrid sports city, where He attended the training of one of the club’s youth teams and was received by its president, Florentino Pérez, who gave him a commemorative shirt.
Cook has also appeared at the Apple store in Puerta del Sol, to the surprise of the buyers who were queuing to buy the new phone, and there he attended a concert by the singer-songwriter Guitarricadelafuente. And then he ate at the famous Lhardy restaurant, where he tasted a Madrid stew accompanied by chef Dabiz Muñoz.
“It’s great to be back in Spain! I’m looking forward to spending time with the dynamic community of incredibly creative developers and students, as well as world-renowned athletes and chefs,” Cook said in a statement from the technology company. The CEO of Apple has also recalled that this visit to Spain occurs in an already “exciting” week for the multinational due to the launch of the iPhone 15 range and the new Apple Watch and AirPods Pro models.
The Apple market in Spain
The company has operated in Spain since 1985 and opened its first Apple Stores in La Maquinista (Barcelona) and Xanadú (Madrid) in 2010. It currently has eleven Apple Stores throughout the country in Madrid, Barcelona, Murcia, Malaga , Valencia, Valladolid and Zaragoza. In addition, it generates 2,000 direct jobs in Spain, 30% more than three years ago, offering different types of job opportunities in its network of stores, AIML (Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning) offices and hardware engineering teams.
The company, which is based in Madrid, where it will soon launch a new engineering office, also supports Spanish developers. Specifically, the Apple ecosystem facilitates more than 120,000 jobs in Spain through the successful iOS app economy, which represents an increase of more than 30% since 2019.
The apps created by Spanish developers thus succeed all over the world and almost 90% of their income comes from users outside of Spain, the company has specified, which has pointed out educational apps such as LingoKids or others focused on sports as success stories. and lifestyle like the hiking app Wikiloc, and health like Cori.
