Normally, I wouldn’t advise you to listen to an earnings call, but Apple CEO Steve Jobs made a rare appearance during Apple’s Q4 2010 results announcement. His presence made the call exponentially more entertaining. He blasted Android, blasted RIM and its BlackBerry platform, blasted seven-inch tablets, talked about sanding your fingers, and was his usually charming self. Click here to give it a listen (Jobs jumps in around the 15-minute mark). Here are some quotes from his Royal Worshipfulness Grandmaster High Steve.
On the “open” Google Android vs. the “closed” Apple iOS:
Google wants to characterize Android as open, and iOS and the iPhone as closed. We think this is disingenuous. Unlike Windows, which has the same interface on every machine, Android is very fragmented. Compare this with iPhone, where every interface is the same. You know, even if Google were right, and the real issue is closed versus open, it’s worth noting that closed systems don’t always win — look at Microsoft’s Plays For Sure model. Even Microsoft abandoned this strategy in favor of Apple’s integrated approach. We believed integrated will trump fragmented every time.
On seven-inch tablets vs. the Apple iPad:
Let’s talk about the avalanche of tablets. First, there are only a few credible competitors. And they all have seven-inch screen. This size isn’t sufficient to create great tablet apps. And this size is useless unless you include sandpaper so users can sand their fingers down to a quarter of their size. We’ve done extensive testing and 10 inches is the minimum tablet size. Given that tablet users will have a smartphone in their pocket, there’s no point in giving up screen size. Seven inch tablets are tweeners — too big to be a phone, and too small to compete with the iPad.
On Apple’s goals with the iPhone:
Our goal is to make the best devices in the world, not to be the biggest — as you know Nokia is the biggest, and we admire them for shipping as many devices as they do. But we don’t want to be like them — we want to be like us, and make the best devices. Nokia makes $50 handsets, and we’re not smart enough to figure that out yet — I’ll let you know when we do. Our goal is to make the best products in every industry we compete in while driving costs down. That’s what we did with iPod — it was relentless improvement and lower prices that was able to beat our competition. As you know we have a very low share in the phone market — single digits if you count all the handsets, and a high share in tablets because we were the first movers. But that’s not how we think about it. The reason we don’t make a seven-inch tablet isn’t cost, but because seven inches isn’t big enough for the software people want to put on them.
Steve is awesome.
