“Seven years after Steve Jobs unveiled the first Apple iPhone, top tech leaders are willing to discuss openly just how gravely they misjudged the device that ignited the mobile computing era,” Aaron Pressman reports for Yahoo.
“Back in January 2007, when Jobs first showed the new device, he pitched it as a combination phone, music player and Internet communicator. But competitors including Microsoft’s then-CEO Steve Ballmer and Motorola’s former CEO Ed Zander could barely contain their disdain,” Pressman reports. “‘There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share,’ Ballmer said of the lineup that has since sold more than 500 million devices.”
“This week, top executives from Ericsson, Intel and Cisco Systems admitted that their companies had failed to appreciate the iPhone’s potential,” Pressman reports. “Intel’s motto, coined by former CEO Andy Grove, was, famously, ‘only the paranoid survive.’ But the semiconductor giant completely missed the booming market ignited by Apple for simpler, lower power chips that run smartphones and tablets. ‘We thought of it as the phone business,’ Intel president Renee James, who has been with the company for more than 25 years, explained at the Fortune conference. ‘And we’re not in the phone business.'”
Pressman reports, “Now Intel is rushing to catch up…”
Read more in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Revolutionary iPhone.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “BD” for the heads up.]
Steve Ballmer, “‘There’s no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share,’”
Apple “sold more than 500 million devices.”
Guess that makes Ballmer the McDonalds of the tech world… with his ‘Billions and billions of miscalculations, errors and just being flat out wrong!’
It was a rounding error on his part.
Thing is, even if they’d known what was about to hit them — which I kinda think they did — they had nowhere near the talent or vision (let alone time) to catch up. The only move left was to scoff — and then get utterly run over by the sheer magnitude of the invention.
I still remember the teaser Apple put up on their website soon after January 1st of that year. It was a black sky full of stars with text that spoke about Apple changing everything. People said that with language like that they had better be about to debut something extraordinary. They didn’t disappoint!
(Does anyone have a link to a screenshot of that page?)
https://web.archive.org/web/20070102194008/http://www.apple.com/
Thanks!
Guess there weren’t stars. And what an ugly homepage. But they sure were right, weren’t they?
“Now Intel is rushing to catch up” At worst it would have been a couple of years down the line before companies realised they missed the boat, that still means they’ve had 5 years to “catch up”. Apple developed their own chips in that time.
And it’s not correct that Intel didn’t try to get into the phone business. Their Atom CPU efforts began in 2008. In 2011 Intel announced a deal with Google to have a version of Andrhoid written for Atom chips. However, not much of anyone bought in. ARM design chips have been faster, cooler and more energy efficient.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intel_Atom
Any CEO who didn’t instantly recognize the world changed when Steve stood on stage and said ‘We call it iPhone’ does NOT deserve to be a CEO. CEOs are paid to recognize change.
A CEO is paid to be a leader of the people who bring him hints and technologies such that he can “see the future.”
But when they get too powerful, CEOs get underlings that bring them ‘the same stuff’ all the time.
Steve saved the CEOs need to get hints. All they had to do was imagine what iPhone could do from watching Steve, but most did not do it.
That means that the Boards of Directors of those companies are picking the wrong CEOs (like the Palm CEO, who so famously dissed iPhone & Apple.)
“Any CEO who didn’t instantly recognize the world changed……”
You sure got that right. I remember the rush of excitement… felt like I’d stuck my finger in an electrical outlet. What a bunch of dolts, that they couldn’t see the potential!
I remember how amazed I was when watching the keynote and how speechless I was after that.
How could the dismiss and ridicule the iPhone?!
The only explanation is that while they did it in public, on their meetings they had an adrenaline rush from the fear.
The iPhone and iPhone OS was so advanced at the time that they didn’t quite well where to start.
They were hoping their dissing would make it go away so could continue sticking their heads in the sand and business continue as usual. Ballmer’s ridiculous, self-serving & non-visionary lunkheaded statements so clearly showed why he should never have been a CEO of anything but maybe a $.99 Store.
It’s amazing to think how a device can change cell phone, chip and computing industries all at the same time. And how we communicate as well.
Looking back is easy; the only question worth asking is, “What are we missing now?”
Nothing. Bad new ideas are easy. Good new ideas are hard. Making billions off existing products while waiting on the next new idea is not a bad thing. It certainly beats copying Samsung’s scintillating smart watch, smart camera and smart TV lineup doesn’t it?
I can see Nokia, Erickson, Motorola and others “blowing it” but for Intel to miss the low power consumption, high processor performance demand is inexcusable. That’s the name of the game from the smallest sensor to the biggest Energy Department Nuclear Weapons testing computers.
As for me, when the iPhone came out, I was still under contract on a Razer Phone. I liked the talk quality but the data part sucked and I canceled that after about 3 weeks. In 08, I got an iPhone and never looked back.
And those same leaders, anal-ists, and tech writers constantly under estimate Apple in general with every new product release. It happened with the iPod, it happened with the iPhone, it happened with the iPad. They all made fun of it, put it down as to little to late. Apple doesn’t know this or that. Happily they were WRONG every time! They didn’t see what level of thought went into all of these products. It wasn’t a Samsung to market first approach. It was what do people want to use, will love to use and how we can make it better to use approach. That is what Apple does best.
people make fun of and belittle things they do not understand or fear. doesn’t matter if you are a ceo or on food stamps. the difference is ceo’s are paid to suppress that behavior by recognizing the threat to their business (and crafts an appropriate response). those who missed the call deserved to be fired. the boards that hired them deserve to be replaced.
part of the beauty for the ipod, iphone, and ipad is that they were a shot across the bows of multiple industries at the same time, making it hard for linear thinking ceos to appreciate the threat. kind of like a stealth cannon ball. there has to be a big smile on SJ’s face as he looks at his lifetime of accomplishments, not in the products themselves, but the industries they transformed.
“This week, top executives from Ericsson, Intel and Cisco Systems admitted that their companies had failed to appreciate the iPhone’s potential,”
That’s because are typical executives. No imagination whatsoever.
SJ, Macworld 2007: “We’re gonna make some history today.”
nothing to add.
“Apple competitors still smarting from iPhone blow”
Shit must have been cut with Borax.