'I won't tell you Apple won't be impacted': Tim Cook held a closed-door meeting with staff on COVID-19

• Apple CEO Tim Cook held a virtual meeting with staff on Thursday to discuss Apple's prospects during the coronavirus pandemic.
• "I won't tell you Apple won't be impacted," Cook said, but appeared to reassure workers against job losses, saying Apple has continued to pay its retail staff while stores are closed.
• Cook said social distancing and temperature checks will likely be brought in once stores re-open, and said coronavirus is a possibility.
• Visit Business Insider's homepage for more stories.

Apple CEO Tim Cook held a virtual meeting with the entire company on Thursday to discuss the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, Bloomberg reports.

Cook warned that Apple "isn't immune to worldwide economic trends," but stressed that the company will continue to invest heavily in R&D, people present at the meeting told Bloomberg.

When asked about whether Apple will lay workers off, Cook said the company had gone into the crisis in a strong position financially, and pointed out that it has continued to pay its retail workers while its physical stores have been shut down. "I won't tell you Apple won't be impacted," the CEO added.

Apple on Thursday reopened its first retail store outside of China, in South Korea. Bloomberg reports the company expects to reopen its US stores in early May.

Cook said once stores do re-open social distancing measures and temperature checks will probably be enforced, and added that coronavirus testing could potentially be brought in.

Cook also pointed to the launches of the new MacBook Air, the iPad Pro, and the iPhone SE as evidence that the company isn't allowing the pandemic to stop its release of new products.

He appears to have hinted that product launches will be key to Apple's strategy for weathering the crisis, citing that Apple responded to financial trouble in 1998 by releasing the first iMac, and the company released the first iPad in 2010 in the wake of the 2008 recession.

Read the original article on Business Insider