iPhone: The Bet Steve Jobs Didn’t Decline

Kontra:

Suppose you were the CEO of Apple in 2005 when a couple of intergalactic visitors with time-warping technology offered you this bet:

Design and manufacture a small mobile device that seamlessly combines the functionalities of a cellular phone, a web surfer, an audio/video player and a small PC, and your company will double its market cap and establish a third mass-market computing platform after Windows and Macintosh.

Would you take it?

Before you say, “Are you nuts, why wouldn’t I?” ponder just a few of the issues involved.

Remarkably prescient — Kontra wrote this back in 2008, but it reads like it was written with today’s hindsight.

★ Thursday, 29 June 2017