To: inaflash who wrote (70735 ) 11/4/2007 6:51:16 PM From: inaflash Read Replies (1) | Respond to I've always thought that Newton was serendipidously profitable, and this is the first account I've come accross to try to quantify that.The original three processors were two AT&T Hobbits and an ARM. Apple had paid not one, but several million dollars to AT&T for the Hobbit processor. The Hobbit was rife with bugs, ill-suited for our purposes, and overpriced. We balked after AT&T demanded not one but several million more dollars in development fees. Instead, we invested $2.5M in ARM, less than what we would have paid to AT&T. After ARM's 1998 IPO, Apple's financial return on that investment was something like 1000%. [Note added 10-Oct-2004: It ended up being more like 30,000%. Apple made an $800 million in profit on a $2.5 million investment. That profit exceeded the total cost of the Newton project.] The Hobbit's commercial demise a few years later validated our decision. This was basically the PalmPilot concept, three years before Palm Computing was founded. When I took over the Newton Group, I invited Kay several times to return and sell the concept to the group. He declined on the grounds their opinions were rigid and they would never listen. nomodes.com That profit exceeded the total cost of the Newton project. akamai.com microsoft.com thestreet.com
