Where do I start? Fortune points out for many businesses, 2000 – 2009 has not been the best decade. Starting with the dot-com bust, Enron, and now the flurry of bad news in the last two years, we don’t have a lot of success stories.
But then there’s Apple. Who doesn’t have an Apple product? iPods, iPhones, and Mac computers are only three products, but most people between the ages of 7 and 85 have tried an Apple product at some point.
Fortune points out that Steve Jobs isn’t perfect. Like many wildly successful people, he can have a difficult personality and demands the best from everyone. But, he’s had both a cultural and business impact, not to mention a battle with disease and doing all he can in the context of a bad economy.
Steve Jobs is 54. This means he may still do more, and we’ll be writing a similar article about him 10 years from now. Fortune discusses other iconoclasts who have changed an industry: Henry Ford of ford Motors, Juan Trippe of PanAm, and Conrad Hilton of the eponymous hotels.
Jobs is a businessman and a celebrity. Apple has a higher valuation than Google. In this bad economy, Apple is sitting on $34 billion of cash or cash equivalents. The iPhone is a leader, the iPod is a leader and Apple stores are now the cool place to hang out for so many people of all ages.
Jobs’ current run of success started back in 1997 when he returned to Apple. I’m old enough to remember when John Sculley, recruited from corporate giant PepsiCo, was running Apple. One can only wonder what would have happened to Apple had Steve jobs not come back. Consider what would happen in a world without iPods!
