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The dynamics of the PC industry from the 1980s through the 1990s saw the emergence of the personal computer, led by Apple (Jobs, Wozniak and Markkula), who produced a high-end PC that revolutionized the way people thought about computing. IBM then entered into the marketplace using Microsoft’s OS and offered the public a cheaper version of what Apple was doing—one that was more compatible across the broader market, too. Apple’s product was efficient and technologically superior, but it was also very specialized and its high price coupled with this specialization caused the company to gradually lose market share to competitors during this time.
During this time, desktop publishing was a major part of the industry, and Apple was a leader here too—but competition was fierce. Apple and IBM actually formed a joint venture in the early 1990s to produce a new OS together, and Apple also looked to leapfrog use of the Intel processor while simultaneously looking to see if it could transform the Apple OS to work with the Intel chip. In short, there was tremendous flux and fluidity in the PC industry from the 1980s through the 1990s. Companies were seeking to define themselves, set themselves apart from competitors, outdo one another, push the boundaries of technology, and produce a product that would be affordable for the mass market. This meant that a lot of push and pull,...
By the mid-1990s, Apple was attempting to get into “high-margin segments such as servers, Internet access devices, and PDAs” and, under Amelio, sought to “return to its premium-price differentiation strategy” (Yoffie, Slind, 2008, p. 4). This of course was par for the course, as the dynamic of the industry was such that companies could swing wildly and widely in what amounted to the Wild West of computer-electronics. These dynamics were not exactly favorable to the Macintosh business, as it cause the company to spin in circles for a good deal of time—but it was helpful in the sense that it gave Apple time to figure out which avenues worked and which didn’t—and that is why, eventually, the company brought Jobs back to guide the Mac in its tech-merger/compatibility movement with the Microsoft OS.
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Jobs did help solve the company’s long-standing problems with respect to the Macintosh business. For example, under Jobs, “the seeds of earlier efforts to engineer Macintosh products for the Intel platform at last came to fruition” (Yoffie, Slind, 2008, p. 5). Jobs also oversaw the introduction of the new Mac OS X, which allowed for a more stable product, and upgrades were made available to users every year to year-and-a-half to help keep the company in…
References
Yoffie, D., Slind, M. (2008). Apple, Inc., 2008. Harvard Business School, 9-708-480,
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