News Analysis: Chairman Steve Jobs may no longer be running the day-to-day operations at Apple, but his impact on the industry will be felt for years to come.
When
Apple's Steve Jobs announced last week that
he was stepping down as CEO of the company he founded to take over as
chairman of the tech giant's board, it was an end of an era. People around the
globe have watched for years as Jobs led a technology juggernaut from the brink
of extinction in the mid-1990s to the world's largest company in terms of
market capitalization.
His
success is nothing short of astounding. It's hard to remember now that Apple
was nearly sold out to Sun Microsystems for a relative pittance in the late
'90s before Jobs returned to head the then floundering company.
But
Jobs' legacy stretches far beyond what he accomplished at Apple. Jobs has
brought products to the market that have helped spawn entirely new industries.
And when he entered established markets, he quickly revolutionized how
consumers thought about products and how the competition thought about its own
offerings. Simply put, Steve Jobs has changed the technology space in a host of
ways.
Read
on to find out how:
1. He made slick design a requirement
First
and foremost, Steve Jobs cared about product design. He realized long ago that
consumers are attracted to good-looking products. Whether it's a car or a
computer, they want something that looks nicer than all similar products on the
market. Thanks to his keen eye, Jobs was able to deliver that to them. In the
process, he proved to all competitors that to keep up with Apple they better
design products that are good-looking as well as innovative.
2. He brought secrecy to the fore
Looking
around the technology space, there are a host of companies that have allowed
leaks to run amok. They come up with ideas in-house, and next thing they know,
information that they didn't want to share with the public got out. But at
Apple, leaking information to the public is a crime that's punishable with
firing, and the company can be ruthless about enforcing its secrecy policy. The
effect of this policy, established and perfected by Jobs, is that it created a
rumor mill unlike any other in the tech space that keeps Apple's name and every
possible move in the news. Other companies wish they could enforce such a
regimen as successfully.
3. A corporate culture customers were
engaged in
One
of the big mistakes companies in the technology industry make is to create a
corporate culture that only the employees know about. At Apple,
Steve Jobs brought consumers and enterprise users into the culture,
schooling them on the idea that his company was a premium provider of premium
products. He has succeeded in getting Apple's fan base to buy into this
proposition. It was a tremendous move. It's something that other companies in
the space are now trying to emulate.
4. Leveraging a fan base
When
Steve Jobs took over at Apple for the second time, he really wanted to
capitalize on his company's small, but dedicated fan base. He realized that it
was central to his firm's future, and he needed those folks to be unpaid
spokespeople for his products. Since then, his company's fan base has exploded,
and now,
tens of millions of people around the globe will defend the brand at any cost.
In many ways, that dedicated fan base has changed the technology industry in a
major way. It guarantees Apple's dominance; it keeps competitors at bay; and
for third-party accessories makers or app developers, it's a potential cash
cow. Make no mistake, Apple's dedicated fan base means everything.
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