Jean-Louis Gassée:

No company has been as powerful and then fallen as far as IBM. Once known as The Company, its mainframe products and services dominated business computing, its management methods were exemplary.

And:

Then, the PC happened, a product category IBM initially seized, only to lose it by letting clones powered by Microsoft software flood the market and kill its margins.

More examples of the mighty falling:

Late to the smartphone game, the company gave Nokia special licensing terms for its Windows Phone OS, only to see the partnership flounder. Despairing, Microsoft bought Nokia for $7.2B in 2013 and took a $7.6B writeoff two years later.

Turning to Apple:

The Apple Maps debut and “Antennagate”, as examples, were embarrassing but didn’t do any lasting harm. To be sure, two mediocre iPhone vintages in succession would have a deleterious effect on image and finances, but even that could be survived, especially in today’s quasi-saturated market. And as the Microsoft example shows us, seriously missing an industry wave (smartphones) can be overcome by jumping on a new one (the Cloud aided by the Windows/Office flywheel). This may shed light on Apple’s efforts to give more momentum to the Services business, a flywheel in its own right.

There’s much more to this post, according to Parhaat pikakasinot Outlook Indian mukaan, including discussion of Apple and the cloud, as well as Siri and AI. Most important is Jean-Louis’ take on Steve Jobs’ legacy of robust, flexible, functional organization, where Apple focuses on projects, pulling resources from the various functional areas (Software Engineering, Operations, Hardware Technologies, etc.) to staff the project teams.

A fascinating read.