Apple without Steve Jobs: the risk of being ordinary
Talking Point: Can Apple continue to churn out iconic designs following Jobs's death?
TECHNOLOGY analysts and investors have been coming to terms with an Apple without Steve Jobs for almost a year now: he announced a medical leave of absence in January, and he officially handed over the mantle of CEO to Tim Cook in August. But with the separation now irreversible, following Jobs's death yesterday, many are questioning whether Apple can maintain its primacy in the tech world.
Apple risks becoming ordinary
"Jobs was an outstanding CEO and his successor Tim Cook faces a test," Lee Jun-hyuck, a fund manager at Dongbu Asset Management, tells Reuters. Will Apple will be able to lead the global market as it did before?
Jan Dawson, chief telecoms analyst at research consultancy Ovum, believes that in the short term Apple will do well, since it can simply roll out products which Jobs had a hand in. The iPhone is still the "gold standard" in the smartphone market.
"The question," says Dawson, "is whether it can continue to launch iconic and successful products without him... In the longer term, Apple risks becoming a more ordinary company without him."
What Apple will miss most
Nitin Bhat, telecom analyst at Frost & Sullivan, tells the BBC's Rebecca Marston: "Product development is not just about getting the technological bit right - it's also about the art of getting the look and feel and the timing of its launch right."
That cannot be taught, says Bhat, and it is the trait of Steve Jobs that Apple will miss the most.
Is Tim Cook up to the job?
At the launch two days ago of the iPhone 4S, "Cook passed muster with a slick presentation", observes Katherine Rushton in The Daily Telegraph. Unfortunately the product he was launching was less impressive.
"The iPhone 4S was so similar to the previous model that many analysts and technology experts felt Apple had left itself exposed to competition from new entrants to the competitive smartphone market."
So had the rot already set in two days before Jobs's death? As Geoffrey Fowler writes in The Wall Street Journal, Cook is known for helping Apple make wise operational and manufacturing choices but not for being a design guru.
But perhaps it doesn't matter. Fowler quotes Jeffrey Pfeffer, a professor at Stanford's Graduate School of Business, who believes "Cook doesn't need to be Steve Jobs - he needs to be the best Tim Cook he can be. Cook understands what he is good at and what he is not good at."
It's all in the share price
There are few better indicators of sentiment towards a company's prospects than its share price. The Guardian points out that Apple share price fell to a low of five per cent off its opening value in Frankfurt. The price was also expected to open lower in Wall Street when the Nasdaq opened later today.
But perhaps more interesting have been the movements in the share prices of Apple's far-eastern rivals today. Samsung's shares rose 3.9 per cent, LG Electronics 6.6 per cent and Sony 3.6 per cent. ·
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Not only did he dominate the technology industry, building a company which briefly ranked as the biggest in the world, but he dominated it without recourse to any of the consumer testing and hedging of bets that proliferates in the rest of the sector. Along with a relentless pursuit of beauty in Apple's designs and slick technology, Jobs had a steely backbone that saw him rely, resolutely, on his own gut instinct. The way he saw it, Apple's role was not to follow or second guess what people wanted from their gadgets. It was to lead them, and by doing so, to create the market. So the world began to crave iPods, then iPhones and finally the iPad which, as many analysts pointed out earlier this week, met with a lacklustre reaction when it was first unveiled, but has quickly spawned an entirely new industry. This "I know best" outlook could have seemed arrogant in anyone else, but Jobs got it so exactly right every time that it allowed Apple to seduce users into an entire ecosystem that changed the way many of us lived. To think that such a small line up of products can have created a company of Apple's size and influence is, by anyone's book, astonishing. But perhaps Mr Jobs' influence as an individual is even more remarkable than his prominence through Apple. Before Jobs, the drop out arts student, turned his hand to technology, the hardware industry was often dismissed by the mainstream or creative industries as a deeply unglamourous sector populated by unremitting scientists and so-called "geeks". By combining technology with beautiful design, Jobs not only brought technology into the mainstream, making it cool and covetable â?? he also inspired a generation of talent from diverse backgrounds to eye technology up as a sector to work in. For creative, marketers, graphic designers and product designers, Apple is one of the most desirable companies to work in, and technology has transformed from the annexe of the uncool to one of the most rapidly changing and creatively challenging industries there is. He may have gone, and his absence may rattle Apple, but his legacy in energising a generation of talent is unlikely to fade at all.
I thank you Firozali A.Mulla DBA