MISSING STEVE, ALREADY
Steve Jobs is pulling out before things get messy.
The tech messiah shocked analysts and fanboys alike this week by announcing Apple is pulling out of January’s Macworld Expo – and his legendary conference keynote address would be given by Senior Worldwide Product Marketing VP Phil Schiller.
No more black, mock turtleneck unveiling revolutionary new products?
Egads! Almost immediately, techies across the country starting chattering, wondering if Jobs was beginning to phase out his role at the company by starting a succession plan or, even worse, had simply run out of revolutionary concepts to re-launch Apple’s stock.
They had a point. Not only have Apple shares fallen 54 percent this year – a steeper decline than the tech-heavy Nasdaq’s 41 percent drop – but Jobs’ announcements recently have not exactly set the tech world on fire.
* Jobs took the wraps off MacBook Air, the world’s thinnest notebook – a nice incremental move for the sector but not exactly a game changer.
* The company’s Leopard operating system and Apple TV have been equal underperformers.
Quite a change from Macworld 2001 when Jobs introduced the iPod or later that year when iTunes was announced – and went on to become the No. 1 music store and helped the demise of traditional music outlets like Tower Records and Sam Goody.
Macworld has become the stage for the Internet Explorer-killer Safari, Macs with Intel processors and, two years ago, the iPhone – the world’s top-selling cell phone with more than 13 million units sold.
Some tech analysts countered the hand-wringing and fretting by offering up more bullish assessments of the Apple news.
“[T]his is playing beautifully for them. Get out of the show, minimize its importance, send Schiller, life goes on as usual,” said Jesus Diaz, Gizmodo.com Senior Associate Editor. “Think about it: As Steve turns down the volume, no one gets shocked when the song stops and he steps back, leaving [Apple’s] A-Team in place.”
Major Macworld staples Adobe and Belkin have taken similar routes. “The era of these monolithic tradeshows is over,” said Michael Gartenberg, Jupitermedia vice president of mobile strategy. “It costs lots of time and money. They don’t need to be there, either. [Apple] has enough gravitas to do [announcements] on its own.”
Foregoing conferences also takes Jobs out of the spotlight, a plus since his questionable health has scared investors who believe there isn’t a worthy successor. “This is a great way to let people know that there are about 25,000 other people behind Apple’s success,” Gartenberg said.
“Yeah, you got the founder, a very important guy, since he had the vision, but I think Apple will do well without Steve,” Kaufman Brothers Senior Research Analyst Shaw Wu said, before adding. “I’m probably one of the rare few that believe that.”