Why no one should underestimate Apple

One of the main takeaways from following Apple for nearly 40 years is that no one can disregard Apple when they enter new markets that seem to be out of their core competencies.

One reason for this is historically due to Steve Jobs’ amazing “gut” sense of what the market would want before they even knew they would want and need it.

A good example of this came to me in a meeting I had with Steve Jobs on the second day he came back to Apple in 1997. At that time Apple had a billion dollars in the red and, as we know it -now, less than six weeks away from a possible breakup.

I asked him what his plan was to free Apple from a possible exit and he gave me two specific answers.

The first thing he told me was that he was going back to meeting the needs of his key customers. He felt that the previous CEOs had neglected Apple’s main customers of the Mac, which included graphic designers, publishers, scientists and the engineering community. To get to that he integrated rich architecture from his NeXT OS into the new Mac OS and made it even more capable of meeting the needs of these major customers.

The other thing he told me was that he was going to focus on business planning. Jobs himself had an artist’s eye and felt that the gray IBM PCs and clones of the battlefield were just boring.

I admit that my perception of this idea to bring Apple back to health bothered me. While Jobs did not give me any details on what he intended to do in terms of business design, I had a hard time figuring out how this would help Apple to climb out of the hole to his ancestors left him.

To my credit, at the start of his second year back at Apple, Jobs introduced the candy color iMacs and this took Apple back to the green.

It took a big deal with Microsoft’s Jobs cut to get the company out of their financial hole through a carte blanche license to the graphical user interface for use on Windows going forward and gave Jobs a chance for this to improve the iMacs.

At the time the iMacs were introduced in 1998, I remember the traditional technical media that emerged. Some thought the colors were too childish and not a true PC representation. Others thought that these candy color iMacs were a gimmick and could not save Apple in any way.

However, as history has shown, Jobs was right and these iMacs laid out a roadmap for new directions in desktop computer design.

The second time that little Apple people came in was when the iPod was introduced. Apple did not create the MP3 player but made the iPod the best selling MP3 player ever. He also introduced Sony’s walker as the leading portable music player and as they say, the rest is history.

However, when Apple introduced the iPod, some people criticized Apple for creating a product route out of their technological capabilities. Others said that Apple did not know about the music industry and that this would fail.

I spent a lot of time with Sony in those days and asked Sony chief executive for his views on the iPod. Like others, he felt that Apple ‘s lack of knowledge of the music world, an area in which Sony was then heavily invested by Sony Music, made it difficult for Apple to succeed. Basically, it turned off the iPod as a threat to Sony.

The third time Apple was considered scarce they came in with the iPhone. Again, Apple drew a lot of criticism for entering the phone / telecom industry since it too, out of their field of expertise.

Here are a few more examples of critics dismissing Apple’s launch of the iPhone:

“It’s not the iPhone of the future. It’s not a mobile device to use in a new era,” was the word from TheStreet.com on the date of the iPhone’s first sale date.

“Windows Mobile is not afraid of either the iPhone or Google Android.” John Curran, Microsoft UK, 24 October 2008

“An iPhone is just a luxury bauble that few freaks will enjoy.” – Mata Lynn, Bloomberg

“We’ve been learning and struggling for a few years here to find out how to make the right phone. PC guys aren’t going to figure this out alone. They’re not going to walk in.”Palm CEO Ed Colligan mentions the then Apple iPhone, November 16, 2006

“We are not worried. We think we have the only mobile platform that you will use for the rest of your life. They’re not going to catch up. ” Scott Rockfeld, Product Manager of Microsoft Travel Communications Group, April 1, 2008

“There is low demand for integrated, all-in-one devices. Only 31% of Americans surveyed said they wanted a multifunction device, and that dropped to 27% in Japan, according to a study by Universal McCann.”-The Keeper

“I like our strategy. I really like it…. Now we sell millions and millions and millions of phones every year, Apple sells zero phones a year. In six months, their most expensive phone will ever be on the market for too long and we’ll see… see how the competition goes. ”Steve Ballmer, Microsoft CEO, January 17, 2007

In 2017, on the tenth anniversary of Apple’s iPhone, I wrote for Time of the Five Industries That Affected the iPhone. True to history, the iPhone continues this upheaval.

Then came the Apple Watch. Again, Apple was criticized for entering a market they had no experience or knowledge of.

I spoke to a leading Swiss watchmaker at the time of the launch of the Apple Watch and he thought that Apple would have a hard time successfully entering this market.

A recent piece in Fast Company, puts Apple’s success in smartwatches in perspective –

“The most famous watchmaker used to be a man from a Swiss-made company. For more than a century, Swiss watches have been a staple – and as a result, the most popular watches by those in the market are the new timetables. But that seems to be changing, and, if the research company ‘Strategy Analytics’ latest report unmistakably, Apple is finally killing the Swiss watch industry.

That’s because Apple sold more Apple Watches in 2019 than all Swiss watchmakers – including Swatch, Tissot, TAG Heuer, and others – sold together. The fact of the matter, Strategy Analytics said that not only did Apple Watch’s sales of Swiss watches last year, but they blew them away. “

As reports from several sources suggest that Apple is making an Electric Vehicle, the first criticism from a high-end executive agency was raised.

An interview with Volkswagen CEO Herbert Diess, as reported in Reuters, has stated, “The car industry is not a normal business that you could take over at one stroke,” Diess was quoted as saying in an interview with Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung.

“Apple will not control that overnight,” he said.

While Apple’s plans are not public, Diess said such intentions were “logical” because the company had knowledge of batteries, software and design, and had deep pockets to build on those capabilities.

“However, we are not afraid,” he said.

Since Apple ‘s car project remains a mystery, it may be right. However, I would like to recommend to the CEO of Volkswagen that, because Apple ‘s history of convincing people is wrong, they do not overestimate Apple when it decides to enter new markets and its energy and innovation put them behind him.