In the post jobs-era, Apple has even grown bigger in terms of the accolades and the lime light it is enjoying.
- iPhone 4S launching SIRI your voice slave.
- iPad3, just launched after I bought my iPad2.
- Tim Cook becoming the new jobs-like cZar of Apple company. Supply Chain Pundits should take pride in the fact that he started as a humble supply chain manager in Apple.
I only remember reading it in my MBA courses how Apple became prey to the open architecture of the WINTEL computers. Microsoft supplied the OS, Intel made the engines and anyone can put together an IBM clone computer. It so ended up that everyone other than IBM started making the PCs – remember IBM sold the PC business in its entirety to Lenovo. Apple Stock went to the single digits in the mid-eighties. Barely survived until the return of Jobs and the launch of the iMac and the iPod.
Then it flourished. Jobs magic created a variety of iProducts – iPod, iPhone, iPad and iWhat…………. The company is the most valued in the world at $535 Billion dollars as of June 2012.
The valuation represents the sum of all expected future profits or what the investors are perceiving it can make in profits in the future. Another way to say it is the company has boat loads of iMagic up its sleeves to make more money not just from the iProducts it already has but also the new iPotential it has in its pipeline and to be released.
Just in terms of size comparison, the following statements reveal how valuable the company is:
1. It has $28 Billion dollars in Cash
2. The second largest company Exxon Mobil is $200 Billion smaller in market cap.
3. The Value of the company at more than half a trillion dollars is one-thirtieth the GDP of the United States.
4. The company’s Market cap exceeds the Gross Domestic products of most countries and just as large as the economy of Saudi Arabia or Sweden.
…
Now it strangely feels like Deja Vu again. However, WINTEL is not back to unseat Apple. Perhaps something similar.
There is a company called Google that has an OS called Android. It makes it available to any handset maker that wants to use it. HTC, Samsung and LG are happy to make those phones and sell it on the cheap. And Google has decided to buy its own handset maker in the form of Motorola, so it has a captive unit that also turns out DROID phones. Sleek, futuristic, and just smoothly and rapidly evolving.
And Apple is starting to make mistakes………. mostly in the OS. Every upgrade I installed on my iPhone 4 since the passing of dear Steve Jobs has been a fiasco. I lost my music, data and apps and other pesky issues. Losing the music is the strangest thing. The music all disappeared from the iPhone but the computer said it is still there……… Oh Well. Had to wipe and reload everything. Not fun! Apple may say I am techy enough for the new OS. But Jobs never made products for geeks or tech people. He made usable products for the users. period.
When another OS looks like the greatest threat for Apple, the company is bungling on its OS.
I know Apple always looked to Microsoft to make office applications for its iMacs.
Is there a day to come when Apple may potentially become a handset maker licensing the Android OS?
Quo vadis Apple?
