“One morning, about a year ago, a doctor told Steve Jobs that a cancerous tumour in his pancreas would kill him within months, and that it was time to start saying his goodbyes. Later that night, an endoscopy revealed that the tumour could be cut out. But for one day Mr Jobs, the boss of Apple Computer, as well as Pixar, the world’s most successful animation studio, stared death in the face,” The Economist reports. “The experience seems to have invigorated him. Last week, gaunter but otherwise undiminished, he was on a stage in San Francisco, putting on a show (for that is what Apple product launches are) that was as flashy and dynamic as any as he has ever thrown.”
“For Mr Jobs, the product launch seemed mainly to be an opportunity to drive home the message that his hold on downloaded and portable music now seems overwhelming. iTunes sells 2m songs a day and has a world market share of 82%—Mr Jobs reckons that it is the world’s second-largest internet store, behind only Amazon. And the iPod has a market share of 74%, with 22m sold. For a man who helped launch the personal-computer era in 1976 with the Apple I, but then had to watch Microsoft’s Bill Gates walk away with, in effect, the monopoly on PC operating systems (Apple’s market share in computers today is less than 3%), this must be some vindication,” The Economist reports.
“The digerati in Silicon Valley, Redmond (Microsoft), Tokyo (Sony), Seoul (Samsung) and other places now simply take it for granted that Mr Jobs has a top-secret conveyor belt that will keep churning out best-selling wonders like the iPod… Hollywood and music studios are also increasingly frightened. The music studios, which barely took him seriously when he launched iTunes in 2001, are sick of his power and are pressuring him to change his 99-cents-per-song flat rate for music. Slim chance. Disney, a long-time partner of Pixar whom Mr Jobs broke with when he got tired of its former boss, is now trying to worm its way back into his favour… for somebody famous in large part for a spectacular defeat—to Bill Gates and Microsoft—all this must feel like a new lease of life, in every respect.”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Steve Jobs and Apple and the Mac are still here decades later. And they’ve done so with their own hardware and the world’s most advanced operating system, also their own. No other company besides Apple has pulled this off during the dark ages of the Microsoft hegemony. Only Apple survives and thrives.
If you want “spectacular defeat,” look at Commodore, Packard Bell, Osborne, Digital, Wang, and the rest of a seemingly endless list, not Steve Jobs’ Apple Computer. Apple sells over 1.1 million Mac units every 90 days. Apple’s Mac unit sales are growing at more than double the overall industry rate. Apple’s Mac platform has tens of millions of users. That’s a “spectacular defeat?” On what planet? You want a “spectacular defeat?” You’ll have to wait a bit longer, but it will come, and not upon Jobs, but at the hands of Jobs. Some are about to learn that Karma’s a bitch.
Related MacDailyNews articles:
Apple continues to grow worldwide Macintosh market share – July 25, 2005
Gartner: Apple grows shipments 31 percent in Q2 2005, moves from 5th to 4th in U.S. market share – July 18, 2005
IDC: Apple gains U.S. market share at double overall market rate, up to 4.5 percent for Q2 2005 – July 18, 2005
Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ ultimate goal: ‘to take back the computer business from Microsoft’ – June 16, 2005
Joe, sorry but whatever. It is silly to compare MS to ANY computer maker performance but most of people is actually very silly.
Apple is the second largest computer manufacturer in the world. It has always been a “Apple vs the rest of the market” that mislead analysts and still mislead analysts. They still wonder why Apple is not dead when just by try to single out brand by brand it is striking evident that Apple is, together with Dell, the only brand consistently in the black. How in the world could they ever bankrupt?
Still, people compare Apple vs all the rest not realizing that the rest of the market is very shaky and many had their number picked already.
On the automotive side, it would be to declare BMW about to bankrupt because its world wide sales are slims when compared to the world sales of 4-wheeled automotive units including trucks, lorries and golf carts.
But yes, the perception is: MS Windows 90% (it is actually less) and Apple 3% ( it is actually more) while it actually is Apple second largest in the world.
Cheers
Much as I loved Apple in the 80s and love Apple now, in most people’s books, losing that much market to MS is a defeat. Especially as once Atari and Commodore had dropped out of the home computing market, they had almost zero competition.
It’s also interesting to note that for the first 10 years, Microsoft had no interest in the home market – and the home market no interest in MS. Apple were years ahead, and managed, for various reasons, to throw it away.
I’m not sure Sculley didn’t understand the computer industry – there’s good odds that if he had thrown out the OS and replaced it with Windows, Apple would be a premium ‘design’ focused PC brand (although looking at those mid-90s boxes, maybe not). He just didn’t understand Apple’s place in it, and obviously lacked the charisma that Jobs has that brings the best out of his employees.
I sometimes wonder if the big difference is that Bill Gates CAN write code and Steve can’t – that Bill might be more forgiving / understanding of bugs and development problems, wheras Steve just wants Keynote to work without crashing. (Well it certainly reflects the split I see in my firm between management who are ex-developers and those on the business side who don’t understand why bugs exist at all).
On the other hand, Jobs was getting it right over NeXT – building another Lisa that would in time define the next Mac. It’s taken time to merge the two back together.
Good analogy on the Autos – in that sense Apple are actually comparable with Sun and IBM (as suppliers of hardware and OS).
Dell are in more of a high-risk position because their brand is based purely on ‘value’ which means low margins – which are getting ever tighter – HP are competing hard against them with laptops. That’s one reason Dell have been trying to start their own ‘premium’ brand of gamers PCs with better margins, but in that market their own reputation works against them, compared to specialists like Alienware.
That’s the essence of it really – the rest of the market is selling commodity systems. But it’s also worth remembering that most of the consumer market is happy to buy commodity CE, and still has no idea what an OS is.
The big risk era is over though – for me that was when Quark, et al, were ported to the PC by vendors worried about Apple. That removed Apple’s USP, but has also finished off the critics who believed the only people who used Macs were graphic designers. (As Slashdot readers know, Unix geeks now prefer Macs – even if some insist on replacing OS/X with Linux).
“computer sales” I like that BMW vs all 4-wheel vehicle analogy. Good one.
I love you all…
He walks on water.
Note to Joe: Microsoft does NOT sell computers. It sells second rate operating systems, among other things.
Regardless, Apple has over $8 billion in cash reserves today, so they’re in it for the long haul even if the iPod/mp3 player market completely dried up tomorrow. And as MDN pointed out, Mac market share is increasing at more than double the industry rate, so this is still only the beginning.
Steve Jobs and Apple are a miracle thar will be remembered …
you don’t have to go to the automotive indusrty to make an analogy about marketshare, just use the data sitting in frot of you. apple’s personal computer sales marketshare is currently 4.5 % (#4 or #5 among box makers). it’s share rose faster than any of the competitors over the last year (only dummies use the last 10 years to predict the future). dell’s dominant share is under 30%, so in another year apple will be within 1/3 of the so called market leader’s share. apple and dell are the only vendors making measureable consistent profits. so based on a shareholder measure, apple is the #2 personal computer maker. hardly a reason to put a gun to your head.
how can you lose a war when the war isn’t even over? aple has lost a couple of big battles, but the war is far from over. it is also about to move from your den/office, to the livingroom where the battlefield relatively level and innovation is the weapon of mass destruction.
“He’s a natural hunter, always honing his weapons and finding better ways to take down his prey.”
Actually, this is wrong. The reason Apple does so well now is because Apple competes with Apple, not with other companies. Notice that the competition all watch Apple for its next move, but Apple does not watch them for their next moves. Notice, also, that any company that tries to take Apple down in a particular area where Apple excels fails. That philosopy and approach rarely works.
Jobs may keep one eye on the marketplace in general, but his team is not out to take anyone down.
I think that is enough apples and oranges comparisons for one thread. Talk to you all next time idolatry overcomes reason.
Joe is off to kiss and cuddle his signed photo of Bill G.