Rob Enderle quotes - page 2

BlackBerry isn't getting out of the hardware business. It stands alone as the only smartphone company exclusively focused on business, security and traditional communication. Until someone else steps up to meet this need, there continues to be a market for its hardware ... (Rob Enderle)
Often, those who come into power quickly end up misusing that power ... we should, but we don't put in place strong controls to prevent rather than punish this bad behavior. Even Steve Jobs was almost fired a second time from Apple and might have ended up in jail for abuse of power (in his case backdating his own options without board approval) and, without Jobs, Apple likely not only not been the most valuable company in the world, but it likely would have failed last decade. View quote
Rob Enderle
This will be a difficult year for Apple, and the iPhone could be more of a drag on earnings than a help. ... Apple is clearly not going away - but this year, compared to last, will be really nasty for the company. View quote
Rob Enderle
I asked the panel to list the companies that would certainly be around in the future - and those that wouldn't be. ... There was some disagreement about Oracle. Microsoft and Oracle said that Oracle would survive; Apache said it wouldn't. I also asked which companies would be dead. The panel agreed that it would be Apple, Sun and Novell. View quote
Rob Enderle
Given Steve Jobs, for instance, is critical to Apple's success is there anything short of eating live babies on national TV that he should be fired for? Where would you draw that line or should he be held to the same rules and laws that the rest of us are held to? View quote
Rob Enderle
[Steve Jobs] is not somebody [who] any one of us would want watching our kids, but, in terms of running the company, he's excellent. View quote
Rob Enderle
[Tim Cook's] position at Apple was to do the things Steve didn't want to do and to never be a threat to Steve, which means he likely is everything Steve isn't - yet he is trying to fit into a spot custom designed for Steve. Talk about your round peg in a square hole. View quote
Rob Enderle
I firmly believe that companies should be designed to be immortal. ... Dell's future is bright largely due to the power of a founder who can think strategically and doesn't milk his company for personal gain. In the current environment that is a unique and powerful advantage. View quote
Rob Enderle
We're creatures of habit. We lined up for the old Batman and Star Wars films long after they stopped being great, and we'll pay Apple the same courtesy if it loses its mojo. View quote
Rob Enderle
[Apple] carries a valuation of an image that is over-inflated due largely to the powerful efforts of Steve Jobs who made the company appear magical. As we end the year, the valuation of the company appears to have massive downward pressure and this is largely because the architect of that massively powerful image has passed - and along with that passing Apple's apparent leadership. View quote
Rob Enderle
Bernie Madoff, who was put in jail for losing $64B actually looks damn good against the Cook's near 5X bigger loss. (Rob Enderle)
Samsung did to Apple what Apple did to Microsoft, skewering its devoted users and reputation, only better. ... There is a way for Apple to fight back, but the company no longer has that skill, and apparently doesn't know where to get it, either. View quote
Rob Enderle
I was recently at a meeting of analysts and vendors, and got into a conversation about Apple with one of the ex-Apple executives at the meeting. I got the sense that Tim Cook was hired because he was good at everything Jobs didn't like to do, and Phil Schiller was basically Jobs' internal fan club chairman. In other words, you really don't have a viable company without someone doing what Jobs did. View quote
Rob Enderle
If [Apple's watch] bounces, folks will begin to lose faith. ... watch the iWatch execution. That'll tell you whether this is a rebirth or the beginning of the end. View quote
Rob Enderle
Apple's move to vertical integration with processors could end up killing the iPhone, and the benefit just doesn't warrant the risk. View quote
Rob Enderle
Apple's two most memorable accomplishments are the GUI, or graphical user interface, and the mouse, both of which it literally stole from Xerox PARC. View quote
Rob Enderle
I'm not exactly known as a huge fan of Apple. In fact, for nearly a decade and half I've refused to use their products and I'm supposedly banned for life from Apple's properties. It's definitely personal between me and that company ... View quote
Rob Enderle
[Apple] needs the support of the U.S. government in the way that BlackBerry has the support of the Canadian government. If not, it needs to think about moving phone leadership and operations to a country that will supply it with that defensive support. If it doesn't do this soon, it will eventually have its phones compromised and that could be the end of much of Apple's iPhone business. View quote
Rob Enderle
Apple's a company whose valuation is based on the fact that they've got recurring, blockbuster products, that the, the lack of those, of late, is just killin' 'em. View quote
Rob Enderle
Chen is not only ahead of Steve Jobs in terms of turnaround speed, he has done something that both HP and Sun failed at: turned a hardware company into a software and services company, arguably something Jobs couldn't have done. ... Jobs smartly decided to kill the process at Apple to transition that company to software and services. Jobs didn't understand how to do that and would have likely failed because he was just a hardware guy. View quote
Rob Enderle
Apple is becoming more and more like a typical tech firm - that is, long on technology and short on magic. ... Apple is drifting closer and closer to where it was back in the 1990s. It offers advancements that largely follow those made by others years earlier, product proliferation, a preference for more over simple elegance, and waning excitement. (Rob Enderle)
FRAND licensing ... in theory, would prevent someone with competitive problems from raising prices on competitors to cripple them if they were successful. Interestingly, the only firm in recent memory that ever did this was Apple ... View quote
Rob Enderle
What we now have is too much focus on short-term revenues and almost no focus on the long-term survival or success of the firm. This is why you don't see anything very innovative out of firms like Apple. View quote
Rob Enderle