“Apple shares rose 6 percent Wednesday, after the company reported earnings that beat analyst expectations on strong iPhone sales,” Alex Rosenberg reports for CNBC.
“But the best news for the company may be the cultural shift that management is undergoing, said one close Apple watcher,” Rosenberg reports. “‘They’re about to get the ghost out of the boardroom,’ said Max Wolff, senior analyst and chief economist at Greencrest Capital. ‘They’ll start making what the market is telling them to make, and not what someone is channeling out of the ghost of Steve Jobs.'”
Rosenberg reports, “‘I don’t think channeling is all that useful in the boardroom,’ he told CNBC.com. ‘”Tim Cook is a good CEO. If he’s free to make decisions, he’ll make good ones.’ …As it is, the company has been constrained by Jobs’ vision, Wolff said. ‘People would tell them, ‘Gee, I like your phone, but the screen’s so small.’ And they would say, ‘Well …'”
“‘I wouldn’t doubt that here and there the company has asked itself, ‘What would Steve do?” said JMP Securities analyst Alex Gauna. ‘I don’t think those shadows last forever—I think people move on. It’s a very capable organization. And the company is moving on.’ In addition, Gauna said, people tend to overestimate the co-founder’s role. ‘What Steve Jobs was always exceptionally good at was being the final gatekeeper,’ he said… Wolff also thinks the breadth of Jobs’ vision may have been slightly overstated. ‘It’s not the stuff of legend — he didn’t discover cheese,’ Wolff said… ‘He just figured that if you made something that didn’t break every five minutes, people would be willing to pay for it.'”
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: Silly season is here. D-list “analysts” making baseless pronouncements, wildly underestimating Steve Jobs’ contributions, and woefully misunderstanding Apple Inc. on TV shows. Happy dog days of summer, everyone!
We’ve forgotten more about Apple than these two fools combined will ever know and we’ll tell you this: The day Apple starts “making what the market is telling them to make,” is the day the Apple we all know and love begins to die. Apple makes markets, it doesn’t follow them. Following whims, fads, and dead ends does not lead to a success on the scale Apple has achieved.
When and if a larger screen does iPhone arrive, it’ll be because Apple (if they’re still running right) believes it’ll deliver the best experience for a certain group of customers, because battery life hasn’t been fatally compromised, and because any issues it might inflict upon the ecosystem (fragmentation) is either an acceptable trade-off or because the problem has been largely solved (with Retina displays across-the-board and scaling) or solved (with resolution independence or via some other mechanism.)
We did iTunes because we all love music. We made what we thought was the best jukebox in iTunes. Then we all wanted to carry our whole music libraries around with us. The team worked really hard. And the reason that they worked so hard is because we all wanted one. You know? I mean, the first few hundred customers were us.
It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t. We figure out what we want. And I think we’re pretty good at having the right discipline to think through whether a lot of other people are going to want it, too. That’s what we get paid to do.
So you can’t go out and ask people, you know, what the next big thing. There’s a great quote by Henry Ford, right? He said, “If I’d have asked my customers what they wanted, they would have told me ‘A faster horse.'” – Steve Jobs
If Henry Ford had made what the market told him to make, he would be breeding faster horses.
Or, the best way to predict the future is to wait for the market to tell you what it is.
imagine the air quality if we just had faster horses instead of cars! 🙂
Seriously? Really?
You should do some research on air/water quality issues in major U.S. cities around 1910. Among other things, dealing with metric tonnes of manure daily, managing dead horses in the streets, etc.
And the logistics of feeding them all…
The conventional wisdom in corporate America is “do whatever it takes to make your numbers for the next quarter. Steve just wanted to make fantastic products and let the numbers take care of themselves. He was a genius. The company captured lightning in a bottle during his tenure. Let’s hope they never lose it.
So they’re replacing Steve Jobs with Steve Ballmer, the sales guy.
“Constrained by Jobs vision”? That’s the most insidious divisive comment made by the know-it-alls I’ve heard yet.
Correction: dumbest comment…
That phrase should win the Most Preposterous Statement of the Year Award.
If there has ever been a company more emancipated by the gift of a vision left by its founder, that would enable it to prosper indefinitely, then we’d all love to know, Messrs Wolff and Guano (who and who?)
The day Apple start to make what analysts think the market wants is the day I start to worry about Apples future. I’m no analyst but the sky looks blue from my point of view and 99% of analysts should go crawl back in the cave they came from! and stay there
Steve JOBS DNA is encoded into every part of that company. Trying to remove that ghost, Steve Jobs, will be the mother of boardroom battles.
Analyst economist? Puh-lease. Stick to your knitting.
Apple Board: Who ya gonna call ?
Ha ha ha.
What a douchebag…what a moron…I bet HE WANT TO RUN APPLE HIMSELF…not in your WILD DREAMS, stupid!
SENIOR PIECE OF SHIT!
Apple stock doesn’t stand much of a chance as long as the hedge funds are allowed to ride roughshod over the entire stock market. They’re only out for quick profits and no company with a conservative long-term outlook will ever be worth anything to them. It seems the hedge funds only like companies that try to burn themselves out every quarter. Apple needs to get far more conservative institutional funds behind them. However, I suppose those types of companies wouldn’t be interested in tech companies that rely on hit consumer products.
I’m still really frustrated as to why Google is seen as such a far better investment than Apple. It just doesn’t make any sort of sense. Google doesn’t seem to have nearly that much of an edge, if any, over Apple as an investment. It would be just as easy for Apple to get into the search business and ad business as for Google to get into the hardware business and Apple has far more money to spend if that what it takes. Apple offers a dividend and is buying back shares relatively quickly. Apple isn’t laying anyone off and the number of retail stores are still growing, so why are investors and analysts so doubtful about Apple’s future.
Maybe apple should buy a load of other companies at overly inflated prices and then do nothing with them like Amazon, Google and Microsoft do.
Because uneducated ‘experts’ view most things as disposable (easy come easy go), they control the markets and the sentiment and this is their way of trying to force Apple into a box and compliance.
They can’t stand Apple’s independence and autonomy it voids and nullifies their power. Apple doesn’t play by hedge funds/wall street rules and shenanigans and has so much control over it’s own destiny by championing it’s loyal customer’s satisfaction and standards that there’s no chance their influence has any traction on Apple’s long term record and track record.
No debt, tons of cash, an unrivaled army of lifelong customers users and fans, does NOT bode well for these monkeys and renders them STUPID and irrelevant to anything Apple.
Nobody can ever replace SJ, not even TC (altho he might be the next best thing, the jury is still out there at least somewhat).
…but an Apple Dream Team including TC, Ivy (and Wozzie in the board 😉 is more than capable of taking Apple to new heights even without Steve.
Too bad Scottie got so arrogant, he really knew his stuff..
I really miss Steve.
Funny how meritocracy never seemed to have established itself in the land of the analyst
Analyst are wannabes drowning in the quagmire of mediocracy…
A micro-horse with a kickstand… now that would sell…
I laughed reading this nonsense. My husband & I listen to these rascals. We always predict what they will say, the stock price drops (we sometimes guess the correct amount within a dollar), the hedge funds short it and billions in a few minutes THEN the real situation with Aople is reported AND the hedge funds make more money in a few minutes selling long. Glad Apple is still focused on the customer and NOT ‘the street’ nonsense.