Tuesday, October 19, 2010

Technical Leadership - Steve Jobs shows the way!

This morning, one of my colleages commented that Google is talking to some of the low-cost mobile phone manufacturers in India to make Android available for sub 150$ phones. This would eventually result in proliferation of android and its increased market share. He in fact quoted a nytimes article that believes Apple iPhone's market share may shrink like the way Mac Desktops' market share was eaten away by Ubiquitous Microsoft Windows. Indeed the argument was persuasive!. And anyone who reads both the articles would believe that Apple is under threat!.

In the afternoon, this perception is completely rebutted by none other than Steve Jobs himself in Apple's Quarterly earning call. He goes onto say that Apple's integrated architectural approach would be much more valuable to end users compared tofragemented Android Approach. It was a fitting response!. As Steve Jobs himself has stated, its pretty unusual that he joins the earnings call after couple of years.

But, Am not going to talk about iPhone Vs Android in this post. That's pretty much self-evident in those respective news articles.

What impressed me what the level of technical leadership displayed by Steve Jobs in the call, the number of technical 'decisions' that have been 'consciously' taken by Apple,the 'metrics & dimensions' of those decisions, the 'impact' those decisions can make to end users. It was phenomenal for a chief executive to talk about the nuts and bolts of technology behind the company's products.

Few weeks ago, I had raised a concern that none of the indian IT service company executives talk in terms of technology solutions behind their services in their quarterly reports. And today's Steve Job's presence in Apple's earnings call just demonstrates the Technical Leadership, I was referring to.

Some of the key technical aspects that are discussed:
- Decisions on 7" Tablets Vs 10" Tablets and Technical reasons behind the same
- Twitter client - Twitter Deck - Tested on 100 different versions of Android
- Use of Tablets in Eductation industry

Steve jobs concludes by saying - "Make the best product in every industry that we compete in and to drive down the cost, while constantly making the products at the same time".

Am inspired!

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