Apple After Jobs 454
recoiledsnake writes "The connection between Apple and Steve Jobs is unlike any other brand and CEO relationship in corporate America, maybe the world. While Bill Gates has successfully transitioned himself away from his day job at Microsoft, can Apple do without Jobs at all? Once word started circulating that Jobs may be ill, Apple stock took a considerable hit, dropping more than $10 a share. And when Mr. Jobs was absent from last week's quarterly earnings conference call, the questions started again — and the stock fell again. What does this mean for corporate users of Apple for whom switching costs are high? Can Apple continue innovating in Job's absence?"
Stock movement != health indicator (Score:5, Informative)
Don't put much stock (hah!) in how people are betting APPL. The shorts got a hold of it early to try and shake out (successfully I might add) anyone with a tenuous grasp (those that bought recently, those that had unrealized gains). Look what happened after that 15 point down spike. It bounced back 10, and the following day totally filled the remaining gap.
Using 2 days of trading to predict the future of a company is less likely to work out for you than say... flipping a coin
Jonathan Ive (Score:5, Informative)
Jonathan Ive [wikipedia.org]
Responsible for look and feel of virtually all Apple products for the last ten years, is as much responsible for Apple's resurgence as the man Jobs himself.
Old news though is that he himself is already positioned as a possible successor to the big man.
Jonathan Ive groomed to take over from Jobs [engadget.com]
If that happens, I'd feel pretty confident about Apple and their continued ability to innovate in create great products.
Steve's rarely at the earnings calls (Score:5, Informative)
Jobs isn't on conference calls (Score:5, Informative)
I guess submitter doesn't listen to many quarterly calls, because Steve is literally never on them, and certainly hasn't been in the last year. Peter Oppenheimer, Apple's CFO, runs those calls. His not being on the Q3 call is simply business as usual, not something special.
Re:Come on, guys. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:But more importantly (Score:5, Informative)
Next wasn't a huge success...
...until he sold NextStep to Apple for big bucks, and wrapped it up in Aqua and made OSX the Next Big Thing.
Re:Come on, guys. (Score:5, Informative)
Obviously you do not have any corporate experience with HP at all. We are buying servers from them and we have a number of (acquired) their software products that we run. For instance, the Mercury Load Runner testing suite. I know they do a pretty good business, so I do not understand your "printer ink companies" comment.
Re:Come on, guys. (Score:4, Informative)
He left in 85. Apple's decline was after (much after), not because of. If you look at some of his decisions wrt to Apple III, Lisa, early Macintosh, and even NeXT, it's entirely conceivable he would have driven the company into the ground.
Actually his decisions regarding the early Macintosh were precisely what lead to its success. As Andy Hertzfeld once said, when he started working on the Mac, it was going to have a character-based display just like the Apple III. Jobs' instance on pushing out a computer with the advances he witnessed at Xerox PARC was precisely what led to its success. The Lisa, OTOH, was just too ambitious for the time. The price tag was too high and the machine was too high-end for the day to ever garner mainstream appeal.
Re:Come on, guys. (Score:3, Informative)
Re:Innovate... (Score:2, Informative)
Average geeks care about hard numbers like CPU cycles and frames per second.
Really, I switched to Apple because at the end of the day, hell, in the middle of the day, I don't have the time to work on my own computer. I work on other people's PCs all day long, and I need mine to work, No Matter What(TM). I used Linux for a while, but it was not as nice to use for digital media, at least not in those days. (I have not looked at Linux in that arena in a while now.)
As far as innovative to me, you are correct. I like to think of Apple's innovation as 'Not-Just-For-Geeks-Anymore' innovation. They are taking things that used to be only used by geeks and slapping an easy to use/understand UI on them, and giving them to the masses. But there software solutions are also seeming to be much more reliable than the mainstream software that is out there.
And Time Machine has a far more complete feature set than 'tar gzip and crond' backup solutions. Sure it's features were capable of being duplicated before, but the UI and the ease of use is where Apple's innovation comes in.
Ok, I'm seeing how I am sort of a fanboy. ;)
Re:Come on, guys. (Score:5, Informative)
Which is supported by the fact that many [wikipedia.org] of their successful [wikipedia.org] products [wikipedia.org] were not created in-house, but acquired and then polished internally. Jobs would have to be one helluva creative guy if he could be the creative force behind something without actually having contact with anyone working on it.
Jobs is NEVER on the Quarterly Conference Calls (Score:3, Informative)
OK everybody, listen very carefully:
I've been listening to every Apple Quarterly Conference Call since 1st quarter 2003 and Jobs has never, NEVER been on the call. Not once.
That makes his lack of participation on the most recent call completely unrelated to anything. Including his health.
whj
Re:Come on, guys. (Score:4, Informative)
Minutes!? Are they a bit slow? No exaggeration, but my father, who is 84, going senile, and who has trouble operating automatic flushers in bathrooms, was given an iPhone and has been able to use the various features quite easily right off the bat.
Anyway, on topic, I suspect that one of the reasons the Apple stuff works the way it does is because people are TERRIFIED of Steve and where he will put his foot if they give him something fucked up. Anyone remember the "rant" that was posted online recently about how Bill Gates had issues using the Windows Update service? He was merely somewhat snarky and sarcastic; I imagine that anyone who gave Jobs an unpolished turd like that would literally burst into flame from the response.
Re:Come on, guys. (Score:2, Informative)
Revenue means nothing...It's not about how much you make but about how much you keep. Apple's revenue was higher but the net income was negative.
Re:Come on, guys. (Score:3, Informative)
"Turns it into another Microsoft? Wow, the shareholders will cry with someone turning Apple into one of the largest companies in the world making over 10x their current profits. That would be something to worry about."
MS shareholders should cry (split adjusted)
Apple Stock price 6/28/1998 - $10.29
Apple stock price 6/28/2008 - $162.12
Gain - 1575%
Microsoft Stock price 6/28/1998 - $27.48
Microsoft Stock price 6/28/2008 - $26.16
Gain (loss) - -4.8%
Interesting but inaccurate. (Score:3, Informative)
Apple's stock price cannot be attributed primarily or solely to Steve Jobs' health. While it may have been on factor, the stock price was already declining due to several factors:
Apple's stock performance is one of the most speculatively-influenced. Rumors of a new product send the stock skyward and, consequently, the release of said product tends to signal that the opportunity has been capitalized by speculators and a sell-off tends to follow. This happens also in the lead-up and aftermath of each WWDC and MacWorld, as well as earnings statements.
Both an earnings statement and iPhone 3G release preceded the current sell-off.
Additionally, current market conditions are sending most common stock issues downward on bad earnings news and renewed fears of the credit crisis.
While I am suggesting that Steve Jobs' health is not the driving factor, especially since these other news items have been far more exposed than concerns over his health, I am not suggesting that Apple's stock has "nowhere to go but up". I want to lay that out there to avoid exclamations of "fanboy"... in the days prior to the iPhone 3G release, I sold half my shares and advised other investors to do the same.
Apple's common stock is currently priced at ten times its book value per share... that is, total assets minus liabilities and intangibles. From a Graham-centric point of view, Apple is considerably overvalued and has a great deal of downside risk.
The question of Apple's future performance as a corporation is not reinforced by how good or bad its heavily speculated (read: overpriced) stock does... as the company does not generate new equity for operations by the trading of already issued shares on the secondary markets (e.g. NASDAQ).
But, I suspect, that since most with an interest in Apple's pipeline and financial success invariably seems to ask how the stock is doing, and so few people follow Graham's value investing philosophy, it goes to reason that what people who post such articles are really saying is "How will Apple's stock do when Steve Jobs is gone?"
These sort of diatribes offer no detailed insight into the actual corporate pipeline, management succession plans, corporate balance sheets (the financial strength upon which a company's future rests), cash flows, etc. and are therefore of little more value than what the gossip column has to say about Miley Cyrus.
Re:Come on, guys. (Score:3, Informative)
The answer is COLOR. Decent black and white laser printers are about the same cost as decent color inkjets. Crappy color laser printers are about the same price as good inkjets that are capable of producing A4 photo printouts that actually don't make you want to puke - not the case with same-priced lasers. I had a Samsung CLP-300 and it sucked at A4 color printouts (the colors were off and not uniform).
The situation may have changed recently but I don't expect that.