Apple CEO Steve Jobs made several comments in the past few months that have angered competitors, most notably Research in Motion. But should Jobs just take his victories in silence and not comment about his competition?
[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]I don’t think so. It’s refreshing to see a CEO stand up and be so confident in his company and products that he is willing to speak out. In fact, I wish more CEOs had that much confidence in what they are making.
Jobs is winning the war of words with competitors because consumers are buying Apple’s products. Jobs is bringing innovative products to the market and everyone else is following his lead.
Some have said that Jobs’ comments about RIM and other companies are not warranted, but if you look back on what those companies said about Apple, Jobs could be much harsher and still be justified.
For instance, when RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis was asked about the iPhone in March 2007, he smirked and said, “How much presence does Apple have in business? It’s vanishingly small.”
That’s dismissive to say the least. Somehow, I don’t think Lazaridis is smirking anymore.
In fact, RIM is changing its mobile phones to mimic what Apple is doing. They also have an app store, to mimic what Apple is doing.
Apple just passed RIM in global smartphone shipments, as it shipped 15.4 million units compared to RIM’s 12.3 million units. The smirk on Lazaridis’ face has surely turned into a frown after hearing that news.
So what did Jobs say that has some people crying foul? During a press conference to explain the supposed problems with the iPhone 4 antenna, Jobs pointed out that other smartphones on the market suffer from the same problem.
Jobs demonstrated that the Blackberry Bold 9700, HTC Droid Eris and a Samsung phone, also suffer from the same antenna problem as the iPhone.
That is not mudslinging from Jobs, it’s a fact. Jobs simply pointed out that other phones suffer from this problem. If Apple was making it up or rigged the demo movies, then I could see how people would be upset. However, it’s fair game to bring up an industry wide problem.
Needless to say RIM didn’t like the comparison.
“Apple’s attempt to draw RIM into Apple’s self-made debacle is unacceptable,” said RIM’s co-CEOs, Mike Lazaridis and Jim Balsillie, in a statement. “Apple’s claims about RIM products appear to be deliberate attempts to distort the public’s understanding of an antenna design issue and to deflect attention from Apple’s difficult situation.”
Jobs also made an appearance at Apple’s fourth quarter conference call and made some statements about what the competition is bringing to the table for smartphones and some newly announced 7-inch tablets.
You can read comments from RIM and what Jobs said, but suffice it to say that RIM was not happy with Apple. Even when you read RIM’s statement, you can hear the desperation. They can only come up with so many excuses.
I could even bring up Michael Dell’s quote from 1997 when he gave his solution to fixing Apple.
“What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders,”
I suppose we could look at the innovative products that Dell released in the last decade and compare them to Apple’s, but that hardly seems fair. I’m not even sure if Dell is still in business and if they are, they’re probably selling the same old stuff.
Let’s not forget Microsoft’s lame iPhone funeral that it held in September. That was just kind of sad considering what Microsoft brings to the mobile space these days.
The things that have been said about Apple in the past are far worse then anything Steve Jobs is saying now, but somehow people think Jobs is being unfair in his comments because he now controls the markets that the other companies want to play in.
It’s hard to compete against an innovative company like Apple when you have no innovation yourself. Good luck with that guys.
Didn’t Ballmer say “no chance” when asked how he thought the iPhone would do?
Jobs comments about Adobe’s Flash 10.1 certainly have proven to be more than warranted. When this crappy software arrived on the Android platform it stalled, sputtered, coughed and then croaked. Put any old crappy, untested, under-performing software on your computer device and it quickly can be rendered useless.
As for Michael Dell, he has become a joke. Dell’s statement is proof positive of dumb CEO statements that should never be spoken. He reminds us of Bill Gates saying that nobody will ever use a mouse or Steve Ballmer saying that Apple’s iPhone will not impact the success of Windows Mobile one bit.
I have to agree that RIM sat on top of the smartphone market for years and did nothing to innovate or advance their user base. Now they’ve been challenged and knocked down not only by Apple’s leap into the market but also by Google Android who is quickly trying to emulate Apple’s success with innovation just like Microsoft did in the mid-80s with Windows emulating the Mac GUI. It’s a pity they are so transparent and then vengeful with their words. Do us all a favor: Just improve your products and shut up.
Woo hoo! You tell them Jim or was that The Beard you’re channelling?
There’s no shortage of confident CEOs bragging publicly about their companies. But there aren’t many who seem to able to avoid pre-announcing products that ship before they’re ready, blaming customers for lapses in service, or trash-talking the competition using misleading PR-speak.
sorry, I do not agree with your position. Their is a difference between saying DOA about a competitors product of which Job nows nothing about and the comment made in 2007 by Mike’s RIM about the APP business position in the market place. I do not think this helps Jobs make his point in fact, the way I see it: if Jobs spends his precious time taking about RIM’s products instead of his own, he must see them as a danger to APP’s position.
No need to apologize; just read what Jobs actually said. He was showing what users actually experience with many devices in the smartphone class. This was a direct, empirical response to the FUD generated by people like Lazaridis.
Jobs is simply baiting and daring the tablet makers to invest more resources and price lower, resulting in them taking losses on their 7″ tablets just so they can prove him wrong.
As Apple’s CEO, Jobs spends his precious time discerning what are the future capabilities and technologies Apple needs in its future products, especially in the context of what his competitors might do. Thus, he’s already looked at and discarded many things; things that are showing up in competitors products. So it costs him little of his precious time to comment and straighten out the clueless analysts and journalists.
By the way, what Jobs did is also great, lasting PR without carrying the baggage of an advertisement. For any article about tablet competition or about 7″ tablets will likely carry a paragraph with his worry-about-being-an-orphan-product assessment.