Jobs & Apple
As usual, I am running a few weeks behind the big news. For those that are even more out of the loop, (not saying I did not know until now, just now getting to blogging) Steve Jobs resigned his position at Apple a couple of weeks back. He remains in his position on the board but will not be involved on day-to-day operations of the company as he has so often been in the past. Of course this brings to the front, the big question of how will Apple do as a company going forward in regards to keeping the almost cult like following, continue to come out with major market shaking innovations, and of course continue to be profitable enough to make stock holders happy. And now tech Friday…
At least in the immediate days following the announcement, the stock did not take much of a hit and the holders of said stock seem willing to give things a chance. A lot of writers have interpreted this as Jobs’ successor plan is in good shape and there is nothing to worry about.
I personally see this in a different light. Largely, at this point, there is nothing to be worried about it. After all, a major upgrade of both OS X and the Mac computer platform was just rolled out. No really big changes expected on that front except a great integration with the mobile OS – though as of yet it is not clear a complete move that direction is in the works or not. The new iPhone, which is due in mid October is probably nearly in production, if not already to be honest. Certainly all the big design changes and feature upgrades are well set at this point and time. Honestly, most of the big ideas for a rumored iPad 3 in the spring sometime are largely already set at this point. Reality is, there is not anything to really be looking toward until mid 2012 at the soonest and really it is more like late 3rd or even 4th quarter before the true lack of Jobs on the job is going to be felt.
I further think that Jobs has built up a pretty good team at the top-level and even if Tim Cook (the new CEO) does not fire on all cylinders right away, Apple has a year or so after that coasting will work and still be able to stay on top of the heap. This is especially true with the major movement toward tablet and mobile platforms over the PC and even laptop model of technology. This is further supported by the recent announcement of HP to pull out of both sides of the market and clear rulings in the EU against Samsung in Apple’s favor. Reality is that unless someone comes out with a well supported option to the iPhone and iPad for a price of about half of the current Apple offerings that either cross patents so there is no court problems from the get go or is a completely new technology offering, Apple is in good shape for a good five years. Currently, the only real contenders are Samsung’s Galaxy which is mired in court battles around the world and the yet unseen Amazon Kindle (or similar) product this fall, that is likely to also be based on Android and hence have the same challenges.
An aside: Interestingly a just a few years ago when Microsoft was doing similar things the EU eventually came down hard on MS. At least some issues stemmed from complaints made by amongst others, Apple – to which MS said was unfounded, that there was healthy competition. Apple is using that play book the other direction and MS has at best become a stagnant non-aggressive company that may well be past any rapid growth in the future.
** – Image is Apple logo  (in Candy Apple Red?)
