At Macworld Expo, Confidence in Apple Remains High
SAN FRANCISCO -- Vendors and conference organizers at the annual tribute to Apple products said they remain confident that the company will continue to churn out successful products, with or without Chairman Steve Jobs, who is on his second medical leave from the CEO position since January 2009. They said they're confident Jobs has created a team and corporate culture that will keep introducing products that can follow the success of devices such as the iPhone and iPad, and they said many of the products probably bear Jobs’ stamp.
"The reality is the products they'll be coming out with in the next three to five years are already on the drawing board,” said Mark Balsinger, chief operating officer of Dr. Bott. The Portland, Ore., company supplies accessories for Macs and other Apple products to retailers including Apple Stores. “From an immediate standpoint, we are not concerned,” Balsinger said. Apple didn’t immediately respond to a request to comment for this story.
The question is how Apple will respond down the road, once it has run though the products now in the pipeline, Balsinger said. “Successfully” seemed to be the consensus of other vendors at the show. “There are a lot of talented people at Apple,” said Jeremiah Fleming, president of Altigen Communications, which makes Bluetooth accessories for Apple and other devices. “Jobs is brilliant, but he’s not the only guy coming up with new ideas,” Fleming said. Still, his company is working on new versions of its products that are more compatible with devices from companies other than Apple, such as BlackBerrys, he said. “Of course, it’s not business-smart to put all your eggs in one basket, but we think a lot of those eggs will be hatched with the guys in Cupertino,” Calif., where Apple is based. The cross-platform support is largely about wooing business customers, Fleming said. “From the consumer perspective, the focus is on Apple."
Other suppliers are also diversified, though not necessarily hedging their Apple bets. “Anything with the Apple flavor behind it is a small but growing part of our business,” said John Haley, CEO of Bluetrek USA, a Bluetooth accessory supplier that Dr. Bott distributes. Changes at the top of Apple’s corporate hierarchy shouldn’t be a problem, he said. “It really might be an opportunity because some of the most creative people in the world work at Apple."
The prospect of Jobs’ being less involved with Apple shouldn’t be compared with the period after he left the company in the 1980s, said Jason Snell, vice president of Macworld publisher Mac Publishing, a subsidiary of the company that runs the expo. Earlier, “Jobs left a company that wasn’t really his,” Snell said. “It was not a company he had completely indoctrinated in his corporate culture.” Now Jobs has been in charge for years and nearly every Apple employee has been hired on his watch, Snell said. “Even if Steve Jobs were to take his medical leave and never return to the company, they would lose an incredible talent, but they'd be left with a corporate culture that really has been infused by his philosophy.”