Showing posts with label Tim Cook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tim Cook. Show all posts

Saturday, January 12, 2019

Could Steve Jobs Have Made A Difference At Apple in 2020?



This is one of those what-ifs. There is Larry Ellison, the colorful Founder CEO of Oracle, best friend to Steve Jobs for 25 years, who will have you believe Steve Jobs was Steve Jobs. Tim Cook can not wear the shoes. It is true Apple has since only been milking what was already built. They are still milking the iPhone and the iPad.

It is said Steve Jobs was thinking about tackling the TV next. If you go from the PC to the iPod-iPhone-iPad, it is a paradigm shift from the GUI (Graphical User Interface) to the touch screen. But do you really want to touch your TV? TV was and is a harder nut to crack. The innovation perhaps is not on the screen. It is in how content is created and distributed. Netflix, and YouTube and Amazon are tackling some of it.

It is true Steve Jobs managed to be a pioneer for both GUI and the touch screen. But what's next? Obviously we are looking beyond touch. They talk of NUI, Natural User Interface. Voice commands. Gesture, things like that. Computing is so seamlessly integrated to the natural environment around you, you simply speak to it, or you wave at it.

Could Steve Jobs have tackled it? It is not like you are saying, Steve Jobs grew up speaking English, could he have beat the Chinese at Mandarin? Steve Jobs would not have been handicapped by the NUI. But it might have been hard for the same person to also be the pioneer for that third paradigm. It is remarkable enough that one person became the master of two paradigms. Three? Three would have been a lot. But it was possible.

Steve Jobs' Apple had almost a hundred billion dollars in the bank. Jobs liked to say he liked to keep his gunpowder dry, in case something showed up. Perhaps things like VR and AR are more capital intensive. Perhaps not.

It is conceivable Apple under Steve Jobs might have also been a leader in this next emerging paradigm, the paradigm of the Natural User Interface. Tim Cook is already missing out. Tim Cook is more like Steve Ballmer. Ballmer kept showing crazy good numbers. But he totally missed out on the smartphone. Cook is similarly showing pretty good numbers. But it is Google and Amazon that are Hey Google! and Hello Alexa!

VR is going to be amazingly democratizing. Before VR you have bought a TV for hudreds of dollars. In a VR headset, a TV is maybe a one dollar app. Suddenly a dollar a day people might be looking at high end TV. And it can be a tremendous educational tool. Super-customized education.


Tuesday, August 30, 2016

Tim Cook Like Steve Ballmer?

Steve Ballmer faced a lot of criticism as CEO and he would get confused because he was bringing in a lot of revenue. A company is supposed to make money, right?

But he was not innovating. All the new products were coming from elsewhere. He did manage to buy Skype though.

Tim Cook has been toying with the dimensions of the various Apple products, and he has been bringing in a lot of money.

Is that a warning sign?

http://venturebeat.com/2016/10/25/why-tim-cook-is-steve-ballmer/

Why Tim Cook is Steve Ballmer | VentureBeat | Business | by Steve Blank

Monday, March 16, 2015

Jack Ma And Elon Musk


Jack Ma and Elon Musk are the two most exciting entrepreneurs on the planet right now. They come from two different ends. Jack Ma is coming from the China end, the Third World end, the Global South end. Elon Musk is coming from the rich country end where he is going to beat the bullet train and go to Mars, and what have you.

Elon Musk is more exciting than Larry Page right now. As to why Larry Page will not sink 20 billion into taking every human being online TODAY beats me! Google's search advantage will not last forever. And so it needs to cash it now, today.

If the smartwatch takes off, Tim Cook will have proven himself. And Steve Jobs will have proven himself. Jobs liked to say the most important thing he built is the company Apple itself, not the Mac, not the iPhone. Although I am not convinced the smartwatch alone can take Apple to being a trillion dollar company. I am on record saying that company is Google. But Larry Page has been a partially absent CEO. A CEO needs to be seen, needs to be heard, like Marissa Mayer was visible when she was with Google. Most of your talk is consumed internally, even when they are publicly made. People inside your company are watching.

But then I was not excited about the iPad when it came along. I am an active user. I don't passively read. I was like, no keyboard? Get out of here. But the iPad has been a monumental product. Right now I feel like the smartwatch is not for me. Just give me a phone with a battery that lasts twice as long. And I am happy. I actually like not having something around my wrist. I like that sense of freedom. My phone is my watch. And it is a smart one too. It is not for me, that does not mean it is not for other people. I will wait and watch.

Right now I am thinking the smartwatch is Apple's Google Glass. It will not die, but it will not go mainstream.


Monday, January 28, 2013

Has Apple Peaked? (2)

Image representing Apple as depicted in CrunchBase
Image via CrunchBase
Netizen Has Arrived: A Link From AVC
"Has Apple Peaked?"
Has Apple Peaked?
Has Apple peaked?
at one point some $57 billion was wiped off Apple’s market capitalisation, roughly the equivalent of the entire value of Ford, a carmaker..... First, Steve Jobs, Apple’s founder and creative genius, is dead. The iPhones and iPads he sired still generate gargantuan profits. But his successor, Tim Cook, has yet to prove himself capable of bringing new breakthrough products to market. Second, Apple’s fantastic profit margins—38.6% on sales of $55 billion—attract competitors like sweetshops attract six-year-olds. ..... The firm’s price-earnings ratio—11.6 at close of business on January 23rd—is not much different from Microsoft’s .... Only one of 60 analysts tracked by Bloomberg had a “sell” recommendation on Apple before this week’s stockmarket fallout. ..... Apple bungled the introduction of its new mapping app, and there were rumours of cuts in component orders for the iPhone 5. ..... Apple could produce an iPhone for less than $150 to broaden its appeal. .... the best way for the company to prove it is not past its prime would be for it to disrupt another big market ..... All eyes are on television (though Apple is also exploring the potential of other markets, such as wearable computing ..... Competition is now tougher in its core markets. Rivals will not let it disrupt new ones so easily. ..... Apple won’t crumble, but it has peaked.
Suing Samsung was the beginning of the end of Apple. That was Apple saying it was not going to innovate anymore, not fast enough, not for enough people. Apple suing Samsung was a symptom.

Apple messing up maps on the iPhone was also a symptom. Apple firing Scott was another symptom. Scott messing up maps was Scott telling Tim Cook, you are no Steve Jobs. If Scott had apologized as Tim Cook had demanded Tim Cook would have kept him around? That is not the tech way. It is not about apologizing. It is about "simply working."

Apple is no longer in the lead in either the smartphone or the tablet space. And it is not going to be able to do TV. Apple is done. To put it politely, Apple has matured.
Enhanced by Zemanta

Friday, December 14, 2012

Why Apple Can't Do TV


Apple can't do TV. It is because Apple thinks TV is a software problem. When Steve Jobs failed with that paradigm he started saying it was not software, it was the industry that was refusing to play along that was the problem. That was progress on his part, but that was not it.

Could Apple Do TV?
Has Apple Peaked?
Touch Is Transient

TV is a broadband problem, or rather a slow broadband problem. The key to reshaping TV is helping move to gigabit broadband speeds. At that universal speed you will have reshaped both TV and movies.

G For Giga, G For Google

Apple is nowhere close to entering that paradigm. Tim Cook wants to take another shot at the TV thing. But he will fail. He is still a prisoner to the thinking that says TV is a software problem.

Not.
Enhanced by Zemanta

Friday, December 07, 2012

Could Apple Do TV?


Man goes to moon. Does man then go to Mars? iPhone/iPad have been the moon. But TV is Mars. Steve Jobs tried and failed at TV. I am not optimistic about Tim Cook's chances of delivering on TV. TV is like cancer, it is like poverty, it is not any one thing. TV continues to be bigger than the whole of the Internet.

Apple could coast for a few years just on iPhones and iPads. But after that it enters Microsoft, Steve Ballmer territory. It matures. I hope I am wrong though.

Has Apple Peaked?


Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy
Enhanced by Zemanta

Thursday, December 06, 2012

Has Apple Peaked?

Image representing Tim Cook as depicted in Cru...
Image via CrunchBase
I think so.

The iPhone was a paradigm shift. The iPad was also a paradigm shift. But by now the Android platform is as good if not better in both those spheres, and there is no doubt as to who is the market leader. Android leads. The pace is to quicken.

And I don't see Apple coming up with the next big thing. Is it TV? I don't think so. TV is like cancer, it is not any one thing.

Tim Cook is average. The superb performance of the Apple stock for about a year after Steve Jobs' death can still be attributed to Steve Jobs. This guy was like the Kennedy of technology. The immense global media coverage of Steve Jobs and Apple after Jobs' death really helped Apple. Apple went to the masses. And the new versions of old products were already in the pipeline.

Tim Cook's real test would be if he could come up with another paradigm shifting product. I just don't see that happening. And that's okay. Not everyone can be Steve Jobs. People like him show up one or two in a generation.

The map fiasco that Apple had would never have happened under Steve Jobs. That was another tell tell sign.

I never believed Apple was on its way to becoming a trillion dollar company. On the other hand Google could end up there. But if it gets there it will have to have done so by 2020. And the clearest route to getting there is in the ISP space. Global gigabit wireless broadband supported by ads is Google's path to becoming a trillion dollar company.

Apple Drops 6.4% Due To Volatility And Uncertainty: The iPad Mini Is Out, Now What?
During the past 12 months, Apple shares have been up 42.7 percent, mostly due to two new products, the iPhone 5 and the iPad mini. With a new CEO and no new product in sight, volatility kicks in...... So the iPad mini is out. Now what? It’s hard to say what Apple’s next product will be, and especially Apple’s next breakthrough product. Steve Jobs passed away a little more than a year ago, and he still oversaw most of the products coming out today. ...... P/E ratio ... Microsoft’s is comparable to Apple’s.
Apple loses $34.9 billion in market cap in its worst trading day in 4 years, but why?
the company shed 6.43% of its value, to settle at a valuation of a mere $508 billion. ..... there could be a worst case additional 10% move to the downside. .... Digitimes. a well-respected industry publication, was reporting slower demand in the first part of next year. ..... Digitimes is suggesting a 20% q/q decline in Apple’s demand for parts and components in March. ..... something in motion tends to stay in motion unless acted upon. Heading up, Apple was a rocket, and now in the other direction it has been carrying weight
Enhanced by Zemanta