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Originally Posted by Liviu_5
Today Apple is an extraordinarily successful company, but then it was regarded as an also ran due especially to early decisions (in which Mr. Jobs had lots of input) not to license their OS. Of course nobody knew about iPods and mp3's then, how they will take the world by storm.
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Among other things, Jobs neatly relegated the Macintosh to a niche market in the early days when the IBM PC was becoming the standard.
The Mac didn't have a numeric keypad because Jobs didn't like them. IBM PC users in business setting
lived in Lotus 1,2,3, where a numeric keypad was a necessity. For that matter, the PC replaced Apple ][s, which the users bought to run VisiCalc. You would think Apple might have taken the hint about what people in a corporate setting actually
did with their machines.
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As an aside, this episode (Microsoft putting money in Apple) is a good example of how quickly fortunes reverse in the market, since in the late 90's when Apple's stock was stagnant to down and Microsoft was going up and up exponentially, nobody would have bet that by 2008, Apple's stock will be about 10 (1000%) times higher, while Microsoft would be roughly about 50% lower from its highest level and just about where it was in 1998.
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It's rather inevitable, really.
For many years, Microsoft was the quintessential "growth" company. The posted regular double-digit revenue and profit increases, and got a stock price in the stratosphere. These days, MS is on the brink of becoming a "mature" company. Mature companies throw off enormous amounts of cash, but
don't have stock prices in the stratosphere. Microsoft's challenge is where to find continued growth.
Their prinicpal lines of business are Windows and Office, and those markets are largely saturated. Just about everything that
can run them, does. Unless MS can dramatically open the Indian and Chinese markets, they aren't going to see much growth from Windows and Office. Their attempts to become a web power through MSN have been failures, and their attempts to be a major player in gaming via the XBox have been less than inspiring.
The cynical part of me thinks Bill Gates picked a good time to get out of day to day management and concentrate on philanthropic efforts. He can leave a winner. Steve Ballmer gets the unenviable job of trying to support the stock price...
Jobs has demonstrated that design
sells. Apple products
look good, and are very well executed. People buy iPods and iPhones as fashion statements as much as for useful devices. The down side of that is a "Have it our way" attitude about what such devices should do, and a closed architecture that makes peripherals and components more expensive. Right now Apple is on a roll with the iPod and iPhone. The question is whether it can sustain that momentum with innovative product introductions.
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Dennis