Life after Steve Jobs: Will Apple Stay Afloat?

Can Apple Survive without Steve Jobs?
Business 620
Professor Goodstone
Patricia Terry
May 13, 2013

Now with Steve Jobs passing, will Apple be able to stay afloat There are people in the company with the drive that Mr. Jobs had, will that be enough? This is going to be one of the biggest jobs to fill, wanting and needing Apple to keep growing and making the products that will help them. How can they improve on that? Well, Phil Schiller is one man who intends to do just that, not to fill Steve Jobs shoes, but to keep Apple up and running the way it needs to be ran. This is not going to happen overnight and people are going to need to be patient with Apple and let them do what needs to be done so they can stay in the race. Building this company from the ground up took time for Mr. Jobs as well, so we all need to see where the executives plan on taking the company, and if they will ever have a new CEO? This is Apples way of having a scape-goat if they need one when the chips are down, they will have their fall guy. Put the blame on Phil because things are not going as fast as they would like them to. In a way, you almost have to feel sorry for Phil, he has a lot riding on his shoulders. Who is Phil Schiller? He is a father, a business man and a man who knows what the future has in store for not only him but for Apple as well. The Senior Vice-President of World Marketing, he joined Apple in 1997, and has helped “Apple create the best computer with the Mac, lead the digital music revolution with iPod and iTunes, and reinvents mobile phones with iPhone and Apple Store, along with defining the future of iPad” (Burrows, P., & Satariano, A., 2012)? As for now Tim Cook is acting CEO, until Apple decides what to do and who to give the title too. Which can be good and bad for the company. Not having one person in charge to make sure things are up to par and running smoothly is not a good idea. They need to appoint someone to become the CEO so that there can be order in the store. When Samsung decided to bring out the Android phones, Schiller was letting the world know that the Android is going to have problems and not be as good as Apple iPhones. Now Mr. Schiller is going to have to bring his game and figure out new ideas to keep Apple products selling the way they are now. This is a huge responsibility to have to be in charge of a billion dollar company budget, wondering how many times he will have to listen to people say, but “Steve did not do it that way.” We all know he was not much into sports, but Schiller loved sports, Mr. Jobs did not like to display his wealth in public as does Mr. Schiller, he has model cars in his office of the ones he drives. Yes, he worked behind the scenes with Mr. Jobs and came up with some good ideas that were put on the market, e.g., iPhone and iPad. So, now he and the team are going to have to come up with some really good ideas to keep Apple going up. According to Robert Strohmeyer (2009, www.cio.com/article), they came up with seven products but did not put them on the market. They are; iPhone Nano, iTouch and iTouch keyboard, MacBook Nano, MacBook Nano Redux, Mac Tablet, Touchscreen Trackpad, and TriBook. Maybe what Apple needs to do is follow the lead of two foreign companies that took an idea each and expanded on it. Japanese Design Company Information Architects took the iPhone Nano one step further and added a shuffle version, this turns your daily communications into a game of roulette (pg.1). The U.K. gadget site took the MacBook and Pocket-Lint (pg.4). Another good idea that is happening is that Apple is trying to stay “porn free,” which is why some of the sites are not allowed on the phones. It makes you wonder if Mr. Jobs is looking down on them and saying “well done” or “what were they thinking?’ Can Phil overcome being in the shadows of Steve and keep the company up and running or will he embrace the company as his own? How will they bring the new items to the market, to let people know that they are coming out? Will they just make announcements like they have done before or will they come up with new ways to capture our attention to let us know they are bring out new products. You know this is not happen overnight, it is a process in the making. It took Steve a while to get the company off the ground, so now it is going to take Phil and the others to get the company back on track. How will Apple be able to make it in the market without Steve Jobs?

REFERENCES:

Burrows, P., & Satariano, A., (2012) Can Phil Schiller keep Apple Cool? Bloomberg BusinessWeek Retrieved from https://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-06-07/can-phil-schiller-keep-apple-cool#p2 May 12, 2013
Ritchie, R. Friday Jun 8, 2012 9:24 pm Phil Schiller Apple’s new “Dr. No.” Retrieved from internet May 12, 2012 www.imore.com/phil-schiller-apple-dr
Strohmeyer, R. Tues January 06, 2009, 7 Apple Products that would have been cool; www.cio.com/article/474394/7_Apple_Products_That _Would_Have_Been_Cool Retrieved from internet May 12, 2013

References: Burrows, P., & Satariano, A., (2012) Can Phil Schiller keep Apple Cool? Bloomberg BusinessWeek Retrieved from https://www.businessweek.com/articles/2012-06-07/can-phil-schiller-keep-apple-cool#p2 May 12, 2013 Ritchie, R. Friday Jun 8, 2012 9:24 pm Phil Schiller Apple’s new “Dr. No.” Retrieved from internet May 12, 2012 www.imore.com/phil-schiller-apple-dr Strohmeyer, R. Tues January 06, 2009, 7 Apple Products that would have been cool; www.cio.com/article/474394/7_Apple_Products_That _Would_Have_Been_Cool Retrieved from internet May 12, 2013