I’ve been off the grid, but this past few days has seen some interesting comments from Steve Jobs, so I figured I’ll surface a bit. We had the annual shareholders meeting and Fortune magazine declared Apple as the most admired company. One of these comments come from this Fortune piece on page 4.
“Our DNA is as a consumer company — for that individual customer who’s voting thumbs up or thumbs down. That’s who we think about. And we think that our job is to take responsibility for the complete user experience. And if it’s not up to par, it’s our fault, plain and simply.”
Another interesting comment came at the annual shareholders meeting, mentioned in this AppleInsider piece:
When asked about the business market, Jobs pointed out that the consumer market is bigger than the business market, and that Apple is focusing on getting its products in front of consumers because individuals are more receptive to new things. Business users work behind “gatekeeper” CIOs, who restrict what gets purchased. In the consumer market, “everyone gets to choose,” and many are bringing their Macs into business environments in a way that is accelerating business adoption of Macs.
These comments re-enforce some of the thoughts I’ve reflected on in the past (here, here and here), but more importantly, it just means that Marketcircle is on the right track by focusing on small business.
Nonetheless, enterprise end-users (especially at the C level) will force the purchase of Apple products within the enterprise and I’m happy about that, but I’m more happy about Apple’s really strong focus on the end-user. Those “gatekeepers” as he calls them, are deadly to the process of innovation, and should be seriously avoided.
Until next time…
AJ
