Monday, June 21, 2010

How Steve Jobs turned Apple Around


If you have been following news of late, you would have noticed how Apple toppled Microsoft to become the most valuable technology company . Its been quite an turn around for Cupertino based company which was forced to get investment from its Arch rival Microsoft in 1997. I decided to profile Apple's turn around, because there are not many companies that make a comeback , once they start to go down. When Steve jobs returned to Apple in 1997 , Microsoft had become a monopoly in the Desktop PC's, with nearly 95 % running on Windows; Apple was relegated to a niche market. So how does one turn around a fortunes of a  falling company

1.  Focus on your Strengths:

Though Apple had lost out on the Desktop market, Steve brainstormed  to identify the areas where Apple was still making profits and not losing out. Simple enough to put your money where the value comes from.This included Desktop Publishing and Multimedia industry where the Macs where more prevalent and preferred to Windows. He shutdown projects like Apple Newton, CyberDog and Opendoc  to cut costs and put his resources on where Apple was still making money Macs. There are two ways to build a software product , you either develop it from scratch which requires lot of resources and time, second is to go out buy a start up which already has the technology rebrand it has your own and sell it. And the later is what Apple did when they bought NEXT operating system. This later evolved into  Mac OS X powering iMac.
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