A quote from a blog article titled iPhone & iPod: contain or disengage?:
Apple has to always remember that simply making money CANNOT be its point of existence. The point of any company should be to make customers want to give it money, NOT to get money from customers. It’s a subtle distinction that is the difference between good and evil.
wilshipley.com
This is a subtle but important error that most of corporate America commits on a regular basis. No time frame longer than the end of the next quarter matters to the average accountant in a large corporation (which gets back to my previous observation about large corporations and innovation) I have watched this particular progression occur over and over in the corporate world, as the accountants convince the managers that their distorted view of the bottom line is the only view that counts.
…and then the finger pointing concerning who’s to blame for the company loosing market share begins.
Postscript
So the guy who writes the blog I quoted from went to work for Apple. That is the punchline here, along with the fact that Apple has somehow managed to continue to exist without Steve Jobs at the helm. Mostly they’ve done it by fearmongering about the usage of users data by Google and other companies that compete with Apple. Not that there isn’t anything to fear, it simply isn’t going to be addressed by paying an extra amount of money to Apple. The Wife still swears by her iPhone, even if she can’t afford a new one.
Bean counters, on the other hand, may have finally become aware of their quarterly obsession and might move to address it. Not holding my breath.
