When John Sculley forced Steve Jobs out of Apple back in 1985, the former PepsiCo marketing executive very quickly produced dramatic improvements in Apple’s profitability. Apple wasn’t losing money before, but Sculley improved the bottom line by about $200 million (a lot in those days) simply by cutting all of Steve Jobs’s pet projects that appeared to have poor prospects. Sculley raised profits by cutting expenses not by increasing sales. Expect the same thing at Nokia where, ignoring for the moment the “enormous payments” Microsoft will be making according to Nokia CEO Stephen Elop, the company can probably cut its software development budget to near-zero, saving $1 billion or more and increasing profits by that […]
Burning the ships at Nokia
No white smoke yet in Cupertino
At the Vatican, white smoke coming from a chimney at the Sistine Chapel indicates that a new Pope has been selected by the College of Cardinals. Well despite yesterday’s news of Steve Jobs’s departure again from Apple for medical reasons there is as yet no sign of white smoke in Cupertino where Jobs remains firmly in charge.
Readers expect me to comment on this news and I will, but frankly I’m still trying to figure it out so here are a number of random thoughts.
I sent an e-mail to Steve Jobs early last week and he didn’t respond. That’s not in itself such a big deal because Steve periodically ignores me. But other folks at Apple were […]
2011 prediction #10: Apple buys Time Warner Cable
My last prediction laid out a pretty aggressive 2011 computing strategy for Apple. But it is just that — a computing strategy — not a media strategy, and Steve Jobs is clearly the most important media mogul on the planet right now, and maybe the most fragile. This latter point is important, because Steve sees himself as having both a unique mission and a frail constitution. He can’t wait to get things done, which is why the next couple years will be probably the most important in Apple’s history.
Who needs a 1,000,000 square foot data center? That’s big enough, I calculate, to support 800 million simultaneous users. Who the heck needs a facility like that? […]
Ask and Ye Shall Receive
Christmas is approaching and with it the end of the first fiscal quarter for many computer companies including Apple. This is the time when these companies make their biggest sales of the year. It’s also the time when J.D. Power & Associates is finishing-up its PC quality surveys which cover initial quality and overall service and support. If you are an Apple customer or a prospective Apple customer pay attention, because this could be a very good time to be you.
Apple is proud of its support operation, which is ironic given that back in the early Apple ][ days Steve Jobs wanted to save money by mimeographing user manuals. I am not making this up. […]
Where's Steve?
“The only thing worse than being talked about,” said Oscar Wilde, “is not being talked about.” That has until recently applied in spades to Steve Jobs of Apple, a guy who, when I’ve interviewed him, has always asked what other people have said about him, “especially the bad stuff.”
Steve is a guy who likes being talked about. He likes it so much, in fact, that he’s adopted a strategy to encourage it. This strategy involves very carefully doling-out bits of himself to the press not in an effort to discourage coverage, really, but to ENcourage it by limiting the supply. Like everything else about Steve it is brilliant and cold.
This was the […]
