Is Apple becoming the next IBM?

Peter Cohan for Forbes:

Apple is slowly getting smaller. And Jony Ive’s departure — who after 23 years running design at Apple will leave to form LoveFrom, a design firm — helps explain why.

Over six years ago, I argued that promoting him to CEO was the last best hope for restoring Apple’s innovation mojo.

But a June 30 Wall Street Journal article reveals why that never would have worked.

While Ive has great design skills, he sorely lacks the ability to envision and capture large new business opportunities that the late Steve Jobs repeatedly demonstrated after he returned as CEO in 1997.

Obviously Jobs’s appointed successor, Tim Cook, is sorely lacking in that skill as well.

MacDailyNews Take: No.

Steve Jobs flips off IBM

Even IBM today is not “the next IBM” in the way Cohan intimates.

Apple will be just fine without Jony Ive. They’ve basically been without him for the last few years anyway.

18 Comments

    1. Don’t mention Microsoft. Nadella turned a company that failed miserably in the mobile sector into a company now worth a lot more than Apple. Nadella is a hired hand doing much more for his company than Tim Cook. Anyway, I think it’s nigh impossible to get someone as good as Steve Jobs as a replacement CEO. It seems highly unlikely any Apple CEO will come out with a device with as much appeal as the iPhone had. I can’t even envision a device more important or useful than a smartphone. It’s Apple’s own fault they didn’t dominate the smartphone industry.

        1. “make nearly all of the industry’s profit.”

          Which is better

          After listening to all the politicians ‘break the monopolies’ talk, smaller market share is not a bad thing.

      1. Apple’s goal is never to dominate anything, just to dominate the part that contains people with money 🙂 They’ve been pretty good at that… everyone else can fight over folks looking for cheap-as-free phones. And, make no mistake, no matter HOW good Apple’s phones are, there will always be someone making a cheaper non-iOS phone that the masses will go for in droves.

  1. Apple is getting smaller? On what basis is he claiming this I wonder. Smaller than it could have been, less profitable than it could have been maybe had it had a more enlightened CEO but smaller? Its launching cards, a new streaming service some may lament about its neglect its core interests but some decline in iPhone sales isn’t making the company smaller so I assume I am missing something… or its someone trying to grab headlines to cover up his own inadequacy in thinking Jonny Ive was CEO material. Judging by MDN’s take he probably succeeded though they too may not want to comment too much on a claim they embarrassingly made too back when Jobs died.

  2. I discovered a couple of years ago… the credibility of stories from Forbes is almost zero. It used to be mostly just one of their writers, but it seems to be the mantra of the company now. They write a story full of twisted, fuzzy facts… if any facts at all… then slap the most bombastic headline they can come up with at the top. One of their favorites that they have used many times is “BLANK Has a Nasty Surprise!” Save yourself some time. And I’m disappointed MDN continues to use them as a source. I really hope this isn’t becoming a “birds of a feather” thing…

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