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Technology Stocks : Apple 3.0
AAPL 269.05-0.5%9:30 AM EST

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To: spitsong who wrote (76)7/16/2014 12:31:36 PM
From: spitsong  Read Replies (1) of 157
 
Apple competitors still smarting from iPhone blow

"Seven years after Steve Jobs unveiled the first Apple iPhone, top tech leaders are willing to discuss openly just how gravely they misjudged the device that ignited the mobile computing era.

Back in January 2007, when Jobs first showed the new device, he pitched it as a combination phone, music player and Internet communicator. But competitors including Microsoft's then-CEO Steve Ballmer and Motorola's former CEO Ed Zander could barely contain their disdain. "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share," Ballmer said of the lineup that has since sold more than 500 million devices.

This week, top executives from Ericsson, Intel and Cisco Systems admitted that their companies had failed to appreciate the iPhone's potential."
Yahoo! Finance: Apple competitors still smarting from iPhone blow

One fabulous example: Ballmer Laughs at iPhone

To be fair, not a lot of people really understood the sea change the iPhone represented in 2007. Examples:

CIO | Why Apple i-Anything Is a Non-Issue for CIOs and Corporate America (1/11/2007)

Analysis: Motorola CEO Ed Zander resigns (2007)

Listening to the analyst attempt to describe why Ed Zander resigned in that last link is like listening to Steve Ballmer describe why the iPhone would surely fail; cutting costs at Motorola wasn't going to help, and neither would making a better high-end feature phone than Nokia. The sea change to truly smart phones had already happened ... changing the color of the sail wasn't going to help.

A similar sea change is already underway in platforms. Google and Microsoft both know it and are struggling to react quickly and effectively enough. But it's already getting late.

Apologies for the largely double-post nature of this entry ... A last-minute addition to the previous post went slightly awry.
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