[OT] mobile rising

[Ola Fosheim Grøstad]

On Sunday, 12 November 2017 at 10:18:09 UTC, Tony wrote:
> But those humans at the top, working for public companies, are 
> monitored by a board and stockholders who place "making money" 
> as the main, and normally only, measure of their job 
> performance.

Sure, when you get a leader that is weak on vision then he or she 
might opting for milking the customer base to satisfy stock 
owners and over time erode support… So there most certainly can 
be radical changes when the original «gründer» or a strong 
«visonary» is displaced. I think it would have been very 
difficult to displace Steve Jobs though.

You could probably make the same argument about IKEA. As long as 
the original vision is strong (good value affordable-DIY 
furniture) then it will be difficult to displace, with weak 
leadership that could erode and profits would outweigh vision and 
they would erode their brand (what-we-are-all-about).

> "growing and retaining market share" is a part of "all about 
> making money", to me. My definition of "not all about making 
> money" is when a company does things to benefit the environment 
> or citizens or employees that they could have legally avoided, 
> which gives them lower profits than they would have had from 
> the other course of action.

It all depends. Are the stock markets fully rational? Probably 
not, many invest based on what they think other investors will 
like and not by analysing objective measures of profits.  Some 
companies are not even on the stock market (i.e. IKEA is a 
foundation). Will stock markets only reward companies that have 
good objective profits to show to or will they also reward 
companies that have low profit margins but are insanely big?

IBM were insanely big in terms of market dominance. Silicon 
Graphics and SUN were big in high-performance computing. Where 
did that go? There is a perception that being big will 
necessarily mean large profits in the future. That may be the 
case, but it could also mean that you've got a juggernaut that is 
difficult to steer…

However, I think it is very difficult for a company over time to 
retain a strong brand vision if they only care about short-term 
profits. With weak leaders that are not capable of projecting 
visions then the share owners will take control and perhaps send 
the company in the wrong direction… With good communication of 
strong visions it is harder to get a majority behind such changes.

> I see Amazon as foregoing profits now for growth - and also 
> wiping out the competition - in order to reap massive profits 
> in the future.  At least, I haven't heard of them foregoing 
> profits in order to benefit employees, citizens or the 
> environment. Their stock price has a very high valuation (PE 
> ration of 285.1), reflective of investors expecting massive 
> profits in the future.

Right, but how rational is that analysis? I find better deals and 
better products on dedicated netshops. If Amazon controlled the 
search applications, then it would look more certain. But as long 
as there are free price-comparison applications… Who knows if 
being that generic will be an advantage.

E.g. is it conceivable that Amazon could beat IKEA? And will 
people in the future buy physical books, music or movies? What is 
the long term market place for Amazon?

(I like Amazon for convenience though.)

> That is what I see as the Apple way of doing things from their 
> beginning back in the late 1970s. They make premium and/or 
> unique products and then mark them up more than anybody in the 
> industry. Their products have always been unique with regard to 
> the OS (except for a year or two when they allowed Mac clones) 
> making the situation that no other manufacturer can offer an 
> identical product.

Sure, but Steve Jobs understood that they should try to make 
their products available on the grass-root level also. So they 
made a line that was affordable enough for people to buy for 
school class rooms and teenagers. Those are future customers, so 
even if you don't make large profit margins it is a good 
investment. iOS is a bit generic and identity-less compared to 
say MacOS.

Current Apple management does not understand that and schools get 
good deals on Windows PCs instead…