Here’s Tim Cook’s plan to get more people to upgrade their iPhones

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Apple CEO Tim Cook (L) takes a picture with David Casarez (R) who just purchased the new iPhone X at an Apple Store on November 3, 2017 in Palo Alto, California.

After warning investors to expect lower revenue for Apple’s first quarter earnings, CEO Tim Cook said he plans to focus on the factors he can control, rather than wait for trade tensions between the U.S. and China to settle.

“We’re not going to sit around waiting for the macro to change,” Cook told CNBC’s Josh Lipton in an interview Wednesday. “I hope that it does, and I’m actually optimistic, but we’re going to focus really deeply on the things that we can control.”

In a letter to investors released after hours Wednesday, Apple blamed factors including a weakening economy in China and fewer carrier subsidies for its weakened revenue projection. The company announced it was lowering revenue guidance for Q1 to $84 billion, down from its previous projection of $89 billion to $93 billion. Apple also lowered its gross margin to about 38 percent from between 38 percent and 38.5 percent. Apple stock was down about 9 percent Thursday morning.

Apple said that fewer people than expected upgraded their iPhones due to the lack of carrier subsidies, cheaper battery replacements and price increases based on the strength of the U.S. dollar. In the letter, Apple told investors that weak iPhone revenue happened “primarily in Greater China,” but acknowledged upgrades to new iPhone models in other countries were “not as strong as we thought they would be.”

In his CNBC interview, Cook laid out a few of the steps Apple will take to get the company’s revenue back on track as trade tensions remain.