“During an Apple earnings call two years ago, the late Steve Jobs made a comment that’s having a profound impact on not only the tech industry but also many other industries whose products and services are becoming infused with and enriched by technology,” Bob Evans writes for Forbes. “Jobs was talking about the indispensable value of software, and about how companies that have focused almost exclusively on hardware and have not invested vigorously enough in software will find it increasingly difficult to innovate, to dazzle customers, and to compete.”
“It’s also important to note that the circumstances surrounding Jobs’ remark: while he typically did not participate in Apple’s quarterly earnings calls, he chose to join the call on Oct. 18, 2010 because it marked the first $20-billion quarter in Apple’s history,” Evans writes. “of all the comments he made during that call, here’s the one that sticks out most in my mind—and it’s the one that connects Apple’s strategy with the $60 light bulb and indeed the entire future of technology: ‘You’re looking at it wrong. You’re looking at it as a hardware person in a fragmented world. You’re looking it as a hardware manufacturer that doesn’t really know much about software, who doesn’t think about an integrated product, but assumes the software will somehow take care of itself… And you assume that the software will somehow just come alive on this product that you’re dreaming of, but it won’t.'”
Evans writes, “earlier this week, I was reminded of Jobs’ powerful perspective when my colleague Bob Shimp, Oracle group VP of product marketing, sent me a message about how an emerging new breed of intelligent light bulbs are the latest examples of software and hardware engineered together. ‘If a 100-year-old technology can be transformed by combining new hardware and software, then anything is possible,’ wrote Shimp.”
Read more in the full article here.
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