Without Steve Jobs for 10 years, Apple cashes in on legacy and doubles in size – 10/4/2021 – Market

Einstein, Bob Dylan and Martin Luther King appear in an Apple ad glorifying the lunatics, rebels, and defiant of the status quo. With the slogan “Think differently” the company, in addition to advertising, began an innovative phase, the main fruit of which was the iPhone. The year was 1997, and Steve Jobs, who is also considered prominent, took over the presidency of the company, which he co-founded in 1976.

Ten years after his death, which completed on Tuesday (5), Apple lost a little crazy and rebellious, but managed to monetize Jobs’ legacy, which He revived the company on the brink of bankruptcy.

In the hands of successor Tim Cook, the company grew 120% in revenue and became First American to reach $1 trillion by market capitalization. He was also the first to Up to $2 trillion market capitalization This last sign appeared during the Covid pandemic, the last worst global economic crisis. Appreciation in the stock market was over 1,400% in the decade.

2020 profits amounted to 274.5 billion US dollars (about 1.5 trillion Brazilian reals). In the quarter ending in July this yearThe result was US$81.43 billion (438 billion R$), an increase of 36.4% driven by sales in China.

From the day Jobs took office until he left, when he was already frail and weakened by pancreatic cancer, the age of portable devices began, and he did so far beyond the confines of his company. More than product launches and loyal fan clubs, it has created constant consumer demand, which is a great asset to the capitalist. The iPhone, iPad, iPod, iTunes, and iMac spurred competitors and shaped the mobile technology industry in the 2000s.

Although the iPhone wasn’t the first smartphone — Blackberry, years ago, indicated it was promising to add functionality to a phone — it showed that design, a touch keyboard, and a wide screen can transform the way you use your phone and create a new one. Of which. Habits.

At the launch of the iPhone, Apple sold one million devices in two months (for comparison: the iPhone 12 line, from 2020, sold over 100 million in seven months).

In Brazil, with consumers that the industry called early adopters – quite willing to spend for something new – the iPhone debuted successfully, but officially arrived a year later, with the 3G model (the brand’s second).

Luxury item in view of taxes and real devaluationIt has become common practice to buy a device from one or two versions of the past to secure a cell phone with the apple stamp on the back. Operators stimulated commerce by selling discounted iPhones along with phone plans.

A few years after launch came the mobile app tsunami: social networks for photos, music services, and an entire economy based on digital playback. The large software companies can be considered byproducts of the terrain that Apple helped find.

“Jobs’ greatest innovation heritage is not the tablet or smartphone, which is already there, nor the graphical interface, copied from Xerox, it is the user experience. It has become a discipline. Any company today takes this on ESPM,” says Claudio Oliveira, Digital Transformation Core Coordinator at ESPM. seriously.

In addition to the search for perfect usability—which has created repetitive and stressful work processes according to employee reports—Jobs has been skilled and controversial for selling Apple’s ideas (no wonder his phrases continue to inspire entrepreneurs trying to imitate his style around the world).

Apple’s ideas were born in the post-hippie environment of California, the cradle of counterculture movements and a major destination for percussion artists. The company was created At Jobs’ parents’ home in Los Altos before him and Steve Wozniak. The apple logo is painted in rainbow colors.

The first computers in the 1980s represented the technological avant-garde. Young engineers in Silicon Valley saw computing as a way to break away from vertical energy structures and generalize information. Jobs was a Buddhist sympathizer, without a college degree and an LCD enthusiast, somewhat different from the standard of suit-clad American entrepreneurs.

Built with that freedom in place at the time, the company eventually gained recognition for its closed source operating system, iOS. The demand for apps sold in the Apple Store is greater than the demand for Android developed by Google. The company owns the entire hardware, software, and service chain and retains customers by selling confidentiality and privacy.

“The user who buys it knows that the entire business will run well from start to finish, and that matters more to Apple than scale,” Oliveira says.

In the second quarter of this year, according to Counterpoint, the American company lost share in the smartphone market in favor of the Chinese xiaomi for the first time. Global sales are led by Samsung (18%), followed by Xiaomi (16%) and Apple (15%). Chinese brands win customers in the West with cheaper prices and high-quality devices – in the era of TikTok, a good camera and affordable battery were enough to capture a large part of consumers.

Losing space in the top three of sales does not prevent increased profits. Although she was not able to break through home assistant market With the same success as Google and Amazon, for example, Apple generates significant revenue from services by charging 30% of authorized app transactions on its Store.

This dynamic, however, has alarmed the market with the notorious The legal battle the company is facing with Epic Games, the owner of the game Fortnite, which accuses Apple of monopolizing the application industry, preventing innovation and growth by other companies.

The company has become less reliant on the iPhone than it has been in the past, but it remained the leader for a decade. Despite the smartwatch, the evolution of computers and the entry into broadcasting, no other product has been able to create demand as your cell phone did in 2007.

“Apple may not be a leader in many sectors, but it needs people to pay for it. Spotify has a bigger base, but Apple Music’s payment base is very good. It’s a company that needs to strengthen its presence in its ecosystem, but that can balance that with hardware Required software, trusted software, and recognized content as well – perhaps the biggest challenge,” says Andre Bassi, Professor of Digital Communications at PUCRS.

The expert notes that the “pod” has a connection to the deceased iPod, an industry the company helped give birth to but whose interest is Apple Music and AirPods.

During the pandemic, a movement caught the attention of analysts: Tablets are back in the sales center, spurred by remote work and study. The product should get the company’s attention, which is betting that chips for the compact mobile device will increasingly resemble the Macbook.

Also during the Covid crisis, Apple demonstrated its credibility in the financial market. Like other giants, which benefited from online activities during periods of social restrictions, such as Amazon, Google, Facebook and Microsoft (forming the acronym Faamg), the company estimated its profits and almost doubled its profits. One point that added to the good performance was Tim Cook’s management in the global ingredient shortage scenario.

Not only did Faamg group grow health crisisIt has been on the stock market since 2010. During this period, with Cook in charge, Apple’s shares rose by 1,400%, losing only to Amazon, which accumulated a gain of 2,000%.

“It was their decade and intensification in the pandemic, when many of the consumer trends we were already seeing accelerate, that drove the S&P 500 index so much,” says Jenny Lee, equity strategist at XP Investimentos. Apple was considered a safe haven for investors, and Expectation around him only generates more appreciation.

With Jobs’ death approaching, the market questioned whether Cook could maintain the company’s growth or remain in the eternal shadow of his illustrious predecessor.

Some of your personality traits Less arrogance, less arrogance, They are welcomed into the corporate world that does not tolerate bosses’ orders followed by “you idiot” or adjective criticism (Your job is dog poop., Jobs will tell the employee).

Cook’s reputation, good manager, mastering the global supply chain, openly gay, more sensitive to workers and less self-centered, is seen as an asset to the company.

In 2012, Apple chose to abandon Google Maps and use its own Maps app on iOS 6. The company was inundated with criticism because the service was inaccurate. Cook wrote an open letter apologizing and saying he was “extremely sorry for the frustration.”

A couple of years ago, a problem with the iPhone 4 caused the signal to drop when people held it a certain way. Jobs’ reaction was to tell customers, “Avoid sticking this way.”

Although he maintains much of Jobs’ marketing guidance, Cook is betting on changes his predecessor might object to. He accepts the use of a pencil [no iPad], for example, something that Jobs would not agree to with all his might,” Bassey points out.

Despite changes in specific ways and the difficulty of a new market revolution like the one implemented from 2007 onwards (no longer financially necessary for Apple), Tim Cook is betting on preserving Jobs’ legacy. “I want him to be with Apple ten years from now, a hundred years from now, a thousand years from now,” he said at an event years ago.