Thoughts on Apple and Steve Jobs
August 25th, 2011 § 6 Comments
The society cannot accept more than one change at a time. A famous quote from the movie “The Prestige” apparently spoken by the famous Nikola Tesla. Confirming its DNA Apple thought crazy and decided to bring about many changes at a time that stand next only to the introduction of Unix or the concept of computer.
Apple for good embarked on the journey of “Revolution” right after Steve came back to apple. The wheels that have been set in motion is not just what we would consider in his own words “scratching the surface” but also unknown space. What Steve has essentially created is a vision and a path that would pave way for more pervasive usage of gadgets and computers not completely known to man yet.
What any company or industry would have done over couple of decades (or more), apple did it in just few years. The industry has been catapulted into the free space that it can just survive by evolving existing technologies by combining recent innovations. Remember innovation and creating new technology is different from complete product that creates a revolution in how you think you use that new technology. Case in point – the touch screen.
He introduced one product after the other that just caught every single gadget freak in surprise and awe. Quite like a genius and a master – after weaving his magic for 10 years, Steve just decided that he would need these innovations to “Evolve” to make Apple greater. This need to evolve is precisely why he picked Tim Cook, the man who is known to be with apple since 1998 and to have understandably changed the way apple operates – profitably and efficiently. You wouldn’t pick an operations guy to innovate, but is that what Steve was thinking when he picked him?
It has probably been decided at apple by now that its not just how you evolve (which people at apple can obviously do) but at the same time do it in the most efficient way that innovators would love to collaborate and competitors would be flummoxed on their strategy.
The next decade at apple is set in running the company amazingly efficient while keeping innovations to evolve the path Steve has put forward. Remember even without Steve Apple did innovate but weren’t efficient in doing what they did the best.
There is not a day far from now when Apple products will be omnipresent but the world would run on it. This is exactly the time and the reason you hand it over to the operations guy. Tim Cook must be ready to roar as one Lion just finished its hunt, its prey – competitors.
The Era of Steve Jobs is just about to start.
Dude… stop being starry eyed.. All Steve Jobs did was to succeeded in transforming the music industry.. He locked you to an expensive hardware platform forever while making running costs ($1 songs to free apps) negligible. That is good, but he earned powerful enemies in the process. Consider this –
1. What % of the personal computing market did Mac capture? 2%? 3%?
2. What % of the global phone market is the smartphone market? 2%? 3%?
What will eventually happen is that some mass market product (hardware + OS + software) will become the standard. I admit that the network effects in (2) are much weaker than in (1) because the sharing of files/formats between one device and the other is taken care of by “everything is in the cloud” stuff. But, there is some network effect in (2) for the app developers. For instance if you develop an app for android, you can run it in motorola/samsung/HTC etc. Consequently the end user will look only at the OS and not the hardware. Similar to MSFT making profits while Dell and HP scraping by.
7-10 years from now, I predict that the smartphone/tablet market will look exactly like the PC market of today. There will be a Wintel equivalent. The difference being that the intel equivalent will be NVidia or Qualcom and the Windows equivalent yet to emerge. That is mainly because Google pushed themselves to a corner by not monetizing android and making hardware the only source of revenue which led to their acquisition of Motorola Mobility. In such a world iPhone and iPod will be just like Macs – products that only complete dicks will buy.
If my prediction is wrong, there will be 4-5 hardware+OS standards each with about 20% market share – Apple + iOS, MSFT + Nokia, RIM + QNX and Android + Motorola. Again, the underlying assumption is that in such a scenario, there are no switching costs. Let’s see how apple is able to maintain near monopoly pricing.
Finally, record companies are itching to break iTunes’ monopoly just like publishers trying to break Kindle’s monopoly. I am not sure if the end result will benefit record companies/publishers, but it will definitely not benefit apple/amazon.
he he he .. ok here are counter arguments – and i think we can go on for ever.
1. Every company locks you down to theirs and this is how CS industry works – unless you have Ubuntu or linux.
2. What Apple has generally proved is customer cares about how the product works – else WebOS should have worked by ignoring the hardware. it didn’t. BB didn’t.
3. If Apple doesn’t expand on their success to a low cost market or find a way where they make more profit with lesser prod cost (which Tim Cook apparently is capable of and did ) then its a loss. So they will still stay on the market like they do for Mac. Android will be whore.
4. Fact is every other company you are comparing them to couldn’t have been any better if it was not for apple – and apple was resurrected by Steve Jobs. Like it or not.
5. What i am saying is an angle, an opportunity for apple over the next decade or so in improving their products and expanding/selling it to more customers.
6. i dont understand the aversion on the products tat apple creates. Android or BB is equally hate-able ..
So point is -as i just said – the fact is Apple strategy of how they expand and keep their business running could be the next big thing in corporate world while innovation is just as obvious to any company. Just a possibility.
See.. I will give credit where it is due. Steve Jobs did an excellent job. But what I am unconvinced is the long term viability of the strategy.
Every product is a collection of attributes and Steve Jobs has differentiated apple based on attributes that are hard to measure. You can objectively say which CPU is better but when it comes to which phone is cooler, it becomes subjective. And where the attributes are abstract, there is a higher willingness to pay as is evident by the prices on iPad/iPod products. In a way this is similar to BMW (ultimate driving machine – what the fuck is that?).. But how big is BMW in the global car market? On the other end of the spectrum you have products competing on objective attributes and price – like Toyota or Hyundai with 100K miles warranty or 35 mpg fuel economy or 200 hp engines. This is where the action will be. Apple just cannot enter that space and if it does, it will be slaughtered.
I agree, but the slaughter part – i would assume true with Steve in the helm of affairs – not sure on the Tim, which is my whole point.
Lets see where it goes!
HP has revived tablet production just now.
sir believe me when i say this as itype from the 99 HP touchpad I got. They need more than the price cut. I like the os design but its far from finish.
it just isn’t easy to use anditsbuggy. I had to pay $2 to get a alarm app. And speaking apps there are no apps.
long way to go.