Somewhere, the spirit of Steve Jobs is smiling.
The company he so reluctantly left behind is in better shape than ever. Jobs' hand-picked successor, Tim Cook, is a well-compensated, self-effacing steady hand on the tiller — exactly as advertised.
And every indicator of the company's health you care to name is doing better than even the most optimistic predictions.
Apple had $97.6 billion in the bank as of the end of its first quarter, it announced Tuesday; that amount has almost certainly crossed the $100 billion mark by now. (The company's first quarter actually ended on December 31.) It sold 37 million iPhones in the quarter, 7 million more than Wall Street was expecting. Sales of iPads and Macs also beat estimates.
In other words, Apple owned Christmas.
And yet, far from crowing, the company sent out one clear message on its earnings call Tuesday evening: we can do better.
Cook was quick to point out that Apple had been struggling with shortages all quarter. Tragic floods in Thailand have led to poor availability for components across its devices.
The company has not been able to make as many iPhone 4Ss as it would have liked. And it wasn't even able to sell the 4S in mainland China, due to a rampage on launch day.
All of which left analysts wondering: what would the quarter have looked like if everything went Apple's way? And if none of those problems can lay the company low, when will this amazing growth spurt end?
An Abundance of Caution
If anything seems likely to hobble Apple in the future, it's that Cook's greatest strength — his caution — is also his weakness.
Jobs may have ruled with an iron fist, and it was he who began storing up Apple's cash to make a war chest large enough that it could be wielded as a weapon. But he also knew the value of throwing out as many spitballs as possible, in the hopes of finding one that stuck.
At Jobs' memorial service, design guru Jonathan Ive fondly remembered the one phrase Jobs would use above all others: "Hey, Jonny, here's a dopey idea."
Those dopey ideas begat the iMac, iPhone and iPad. They also begat the countless tiny improvements which helped each of those devices redefine their category.
But it's hard to imagine Cook peppering Ive with dopey ideas. So who is throwing out spitballs at Apple now? Is upper management making it okay for the company's designers and engineers to try new ideas and fail fast?
Or is caution the new watchword throughout Apple? Are Apple's industry-beating engineers and designers feeling constricted by Cook's carefulness?
If so, then Apple could find itself being out-innovated by the competition. As one of the analysts on the earnings call pointed out, Android phones already beat the iPhone in a couple of categories: screen size and speed (ie. 4G).
Cook responded that Apple didn't consider itself in a race with Android and was focused on creating the best product it could.
Yet if Android handset makers manage to overcome the battery life issues that plague 4G phones — the Droid Razr Maxx, set to launch Thursday, promises to do just that with an eye-popping 21 hours of battery life — then they have a very real claim to be selling more innovative devices than Apple.
Okay, that's one phone. But Apple's insistence on selling a very small number of products, albeit excellent products, means that it only takes a few such insurgent gadgets to win before people begin to wonder what the company is really good for.
No, that won't happen this year, and probably not next. But in 2014? Maybe.
If it is eventually buried under copycats-turned-innovators, even Apple's giant war chest won't necessarily help. Not if its leadership is overcautious and allergic to major innovations or new products.
It may seem almost too ridiculous to consider that Apple could be knocked off its lofty perch. But rest assured, it will happen sooner or later. All companies die eventually; all rise and fall. Cook is doing his best to push all problems into the far future, and in many ways he's doing the best job imaginable.
But Apple already has two bars to jump this year: the launches of the iPad 3 and the iPhone 5. Expectations are ridiculously high. To meet them, Cook had better be throwing lots of spitballs behind the scenes — or appointing Jobsian idea-generating leaders who can.
No hay comentarios:
Publicar un comentario