How has Steve Jobs succeeded in the new mobile world?

There is no doubt that the man, who has now achieved near mystical status in both the IT and the marketing world, made mistakes that led to the near defeat of the Apple Macintosh by the Microsoft marketing machine. But like the good entrepreneur he is, he learned from the company's mistakes.

The Macintosh and Apple's integrated software was a superior product than that provided by the Microsoft Windows operating system (MS-DOS and then Windows). I can say this as I used both systems extensively from the mid-1980s. Back then both companies were going head to head using different business models.

Microsoft sold an operating system and put it on manufacturers' computers. Apple sold both the software and the hardware. For someone in the publishing business, it was much easier to use an Apple than the troublesome Windows. There were lots of lovely features, including the use of windows, a graphical interface which Jobs pioneered! In the lingo of the time, Apple was cool, Microsoft was big business.

However, Apple became too cool for its own good, marketing itself as an exclusive product, rather than to the mass consumer market. The prices reflected this. Apple sold its package for a much higher price than the computer manufacturer offering the hardware with Windows included.

It's an old business adage that what is good enough will often beat the best if the price is right. Bermuda-resident Michael Bloomberg quotes this phrase when describing how his Bloomberg machines beat the likes of Reuters in supplying live financial information to the investment market. Apple at one point had less than three percent of the global desktop computer market but has since bounced back to between eight and ten percent of the market, depending on who is counting.

However, it is the innovations it has made in the mobile marketplace that helped Apple remain in the game and live to conquer. After a series of disastrous CEOs (including John Sculley, whose mother is Bermudian), Apple co-founder Steve Jobs took back control of the company in 1997.

Under Jobs, Apple regained its mission in life and began not only releasing better operating systems, but products which at first did not at first seem connected to its core business – the iPod and the iPhone.

Laurent De Hauwere, the Managing Partner of Ptolemus Consulting Group, describes the Jobs process of making these two of the most market transforming products in the technology marketplace and beyond.

"Steve Jobs not only created the best technology but also created an ecosystem," said De Hauwere at a recent conference I attended. "He learned from the defeat by Microsoft of the Macintosh. It is not enough the have the best computer. Creating an ecosystem is stronger than creating an environment however excellent it is. With the iPhone, he has actually built an environment and an ecosystem."

In other words, Jobs knew that the iPhone was technologically hot. However, its features would end up being copied, making it just another smartphone on the market. As he did in transforming the digital music market with the iPod and the iTunes store, Jobs created the ecosystem, the Apps Store, to allow developers to become creative with the system.

Within three years to 2009, developers created 140,000 apps leading to 3 billion downloads and $1 billion in revenues a year. About 70 percent of the gross revenues go to developers, creating the incentive for them to compete in the Apple online marketplace.

In those three years, Apple went from zero to conquering 20 percent of the smartphone market. The development continues apace as the iPhone keeps getting more features, including four ways to navigate (satellite, cellular, Skyhook Wifi and compass).

Jobs is transferring that success of the App Store to the latest device, the iPad. The iPad makes use of the App Store and already developers and companies have released a myriad of apps for the platform. These include lots of traditional media companies, who see it as their means of clawing back the news business from its seeming decline.

It is through the iPad that Apple hopes to reconquer the consumer market for computers. Many have noted that consumers have been in the process of slowly switching from desktops to laptops as their principle machines. Perhaps Jobs has completed the circle, bringing Apple back to when the Mac was the people's machine.

Send any comments to Ahmed at elamin.ahmed@gmail.com.