“Jawbone is ascending into the top echelon of tech startups, joining the likes of Uber, Dropbox, and Square,” Marcus Wohlsen writes for Wired. “But unlike these other rising stars, which are redefining digital services, Jawbone is redefining our gadgets themselves.”
“The maker of the Jambox wireless speaker and the Up fitness band — not to mention the least nerdy cell phone headsets — is reportedly about to close a quarter-billion-dollar investment,” Wohlsen writes. “This funding round would set the company up for a high profile IPO. And it should give pause to the world’s leading gadget maker, Apple. New money for Jawbone generally means a move into an entirely new product category — a move Apple has struggled to make in recent years.”
MacDailyNews Take: “Struggled” our collective ass. For the sake of fsck, Marcus, puleeze.
• iPhone was released 5 years, 7 months, and 19 days after iPod.
• iPad was released 2 years, 9 months, and 5 days after iPhone.
• Tim Cook has been Apple CEO for 2 years, 5 months, and 22 days.
“‘Good design accelerates the adoption of new ideas,’ Yves Béhar, the famed industrial designer and Jawbone’s chief creative officer, told Kara Swisher in a recent Vanity Fair profile,” Wohlsen writes. “As a master of design, Jawbone may beat Apple to those new ideas. And that’s what makes the startup such a threat.”
MacDailyNews Take: You know, because Apple’s Jony Ive knows nothing about design.
Wohlsen writes, “Apple’s stock price has fallen in recent months amid concerns that the company isn’t moving fast enough into entirely new areas beyond phones and tablets. The rumors of an Apple smartwatch have swirled for so long without the arrival of a real product, the company looks like it can’t make decisive advances without Steve Jobs to lead it.”
MacDailyNews Take:
• iPhone was released 5 years, 7 months, and 19 days after iPod.
• iPad was released 2 years, 9 months, and 5 days after iPhone.
• Tim Cook has been Apple CEO for 2 years, 5 months, and 22 days.
“To be sure, Jawbone is a small company that’s still plowing through venture capital. But for Apple, Jawbone ceases to be small if it’s purchased by Google,” Wohlsen writes. “At least before the Nest acquisition, Apple hasn’t had to worry much about competing directly with Google as a hardware maker. If Google bought Jawbone too, Apple would have even more reason to be anxious. One way out for Apple is to buy Jawbone itself. But that would be a big leap for the company. After this latest funding round, Jawbone is valued at more than $3 billion. That’s far more than Apple has ever paid for an acquisition. But that would be a small price to pay to inspire investors — and it would be way less boring than a stock buyback.”
MacDailyNews Take: Google needs to buy companies in order to either flush billions down the toilet or to try to catch Apple in whatever respect they think they need to catch Apple this week. Google’s scatterbrained strategy has not proven effective to date.
Full article – Think Before You Click™ – here.
MacDailyNews Take: If you think Marcus sounds silly now, just wait until we trot this one out again for reference in the near future.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Readers “CognativeDisonance” and “David E.” for the heads up.]
