“Since the iPhone 5 release, and the Maps fracas, Apple shares lost about 4.5% of their value, that’s about $30bn (£18.6bn) in market cap,” Jean-Louis Gassée writes for The Guardian.
“Fair or not, it’s hard not to fantasise about another course of events where, in advance, a less apologetic Tim Cook letter would have told Apple customers of the ‘aspiring’ state of Apple maps and encouraged them to keep alternatives and workarounds in mind,” Gassée writes. “We’ll never know how Apple shares would have behaved, but they certainly wouldn’t have gone lower than they stand now – and Apple’s reputation as a forthright, thoughtful company would have been greatly enhanced.”
Gassée writes, “One is left to wonder how such a hot issue, Apple maps v Google maps, wasn’t handled with more care – before the blowup. And why, with inevitable comparisons between an infant product and a mature, world-class one, the marketing message was so lackadaisically bombastic… And last, the CEO. Was trust in his team misplaced or abused? Were the kind of checks that make Apple’s supply chain work so well also applied to the maps product, or was some ill side-effect of team spirit at play, preventing the much-needed bad news to reach the top?”
Read more in the full article here.
What delay? This is a ridiculous statement. Gassee is still PO’d because Ameio balked his asking price for Be. Good thing he went with NeXt, for if Apple had gone with Gassee, it would have been hanging on by its fingernails. Sour grapes.
I am not very great with English but I get hold this rattling easygoing to understand.