If you think you occasionally have a bad day at work, spare a thought for Steve Jobs.
He started 2007 with a fair amount of exciting news: a new name for his huge company (to be known now simply as Apple) and first official details of the iPhone product.
A couple of weeks later, he announced profits in excess of $1bn (£510m) for the last quarter of 2006 – a performance boosted in no small part by sales of more than 21 million iPods worldwide in the run up to Christmas. Don’t worry if you find yourself reading those numbers again. I did. Several times.
News of the Apple phone product caused more than a ripple at the annual Macworld Conference in San Francisco. It was the sort of ripple firms like Apple love but their competitors dread.
Apple shares closed 8% higher on news that it was launching the touch screen phone. At the same time, shares in Apple’s major rivals such as Blackberry were sent sharply lower.
The IPhone will cost around £260 and go on sale in the US in the summer, with an assault on the European market following in the autumn.
In its first year in the market, Jobs anticipates sales of 1 million units. When it goes on sale in Asia next year, that figure should rise to 10 million units. That’s another set of big numbers. But even sales of 10m are only equivalent to 1% of today’s yearly mobile phone market.
You get the picture? Apple are powerful and successful players in a huge and complex market. Yet, despite all these impressive sales and product developments, shares in Apple fell the day the figures were published.
Surely, that is enough to make Steve Jobs feel as though he has had a bad day at the office?
According to market analysts quoted by the BBC, investors were more concerned with poor computer sales and the hint that sales performance in the first quarter of this year may miss targets.
That remains to be seen.
What we can see – almost everywhere we look – is evidence of the phenomenal success and popularity of many Apple products.
It’s hard to imagine a better text book example of how to successfully research markets, create products to serve those markets, create an almost insatiable demand for those products, and deliver above (and often beyond) customer expectations.
That’s the sort of performance every business can aspire to
The launch of IPhone looks set to be another major milestone the history of this amazing company. When Steve Jobs and his talented team reach that point, maybe, just maybe, the market will acknowledge their achievements.
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