“The success of virtually every arm of Apple in the past quarter has been detailed elsewhere, but what jumped out at me was how different this could all have turned out. The company’s commercial victories were anything but pre-ordained, and if you swing the clock back 10 years I don’t know of many people who would have forecast [today’s Apple Inc.],” Markman writes. “If you just started to invest in the past five years, it may be hard for you to imagine but Apple for years was always like the loner, snooty, hipster kid at school that the in crowd mocked.”
“How did the Apple miracle occur? You have to point to one man, and that is Jobs, who may have sacrificed his well-being to bring his company to this height,” Markman writes. “Strip away the numbers, and what’s left is one person’s vision, taste, engineering, ambition and charm that created two multibillion-dollar success stories — animated film maker Pixar, sold to Disney awhile ago, was the other — that defied conventional wisdom and Wall Street expectations at every turn.”
“Jobs will go down in the history books as the equal of Thomas Alva Edison, who founded General Electric; Henry Ford, who founded Ford Motor; John D. Rockefeller, who founded Standard Oil; and J.P. Morgan, who started a certain eponymous bank. None of these gentleman had their success handed to them on a silver platter, but persevered with a vision and business proposition that was uniquely suited to their times,” Markman writes. “All these companies survived their founder, and so will Apple.”
Markman writes, “In the meantime, we are lucky to have had an opportunity to witness Jobs emerge, grow and cast his spell in our lifetimes, and I certainly wish him a speedy recovery. And as for the stock, well, Apple has been one of the few great holds of the past few years. Yet it also regularly provides new entry points. The next buying opportunity should emerge this quarter.”
Much more in the full article – highly recommended – here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “iWill” for the heads up.]