Steve Jobs introduces the iMac - 1998

1998-05-0626:50English

Transcript

Machine transcript in the original language. It may contain errors. Select a timestamp to play that moment.

It's been 10 months since a new management team took over at Apple.
People have been working really hard.
You can see a lot of cars in the parking lots and nights and the weekends.
And because of their hard work, I'm really pleased to report to you today that Apple's back on track.
and because of this with the foundation this gives us we're going to announce some great
new products today and we're even going to roll out the whole product strategy today
we do i just want to spend a few minutes and take you through some examples of how apple is back on
track. The most important thing of course is people. Apple's got now a very wise
board of directors. Apple's got a very strong senior management team. I would
hold the senior management team at Apple up against any other in the industry.
But most important, Apple's got some very talented employees. Just incredibly
talented people. And when you have great people, the most important thing is to
not lose them.
When I came back to Apple last summer,
Apple was losing a lot of them.
The attrition rate annualized was 33%,
which meant that if Apple kept losing people at that rate,
in a year, a third of them would be gone.
And I'm very pleased to say that 10 months later,
the attrition rate is 15%, and that that
is under the Silicon Valley average today.
And that's a very good sign.
And part of that is because people now see how Apple can win again.
Another part of that is because we've made Apple a much more entrepreneurial place.
All of the key employees have lots of stock options.
Another key thing that we've done is distribution.
We've made a lot of changes in the way Apple distributes its products,
a lot of tune-ups across the distribution system.
And, of course, one of the bigger ones was at the national level partnering with CompUSA.
They're the biggest, and they decided to reinvest in Apple,
and it's worked out great.
As you know, they put an Apple store within a store
in each of their approximately 170 stores throughout the U.S.
When we started this program,
Apple represented 3% of the CPU revenues sold by CompUSA.
Six months later, Apple represents 15% of the revenues
of CPUs sold at CompUSA.
Another area that we can gauge to see Apple's health is the Internet.
Apple.com.
How many people are interested in Apple?
Now, we've got over 20 million active customers.
They might be interested in coming to our website.
We have tons of prospective customers who might be interested.
A lot of suppliers, a lot of software developers, a lot of competitors.
And so this taken together can give us a general thermometer of what is the interest level of people about Apple.
And we've invested a lot into the website and a lot into the award-winning Apple Store,
which is the gold standard of e-commerce now on the web.
And a year ago, we had a million hits per day.
Now, the average visitor clicks about 5 to 10 times, so that's 100,000 to 200,000 visitors per day.
Today, 9, 10 months later, we have 10 million hits a day on the website.
That's 1 to 2 million visitors a day coming to the Apple website.
And they're coming because they're interested in Apple.
Growth. The quarter that ended December, IDC reported that Apple had a 3.4% market share.
The quarter that ended in March, we actually grew our market share 15% to 4%. Now, we're
not thrilled with 4% market share, but if we can grow our market share 15% every quarter,
we will see it going in the right direction, which it is now. And I think we expect it
to rise quite a bit more based on some of the things you're going to see here today.
But it is now going in the right direction again.
And finance.
We have some pretty ambitious plans.
We want to develop a lot of great products.
We want to market them.
It takes money.
And our customers need to know that Apple's going to be here 10 years from now.
Well, we were able to turn the company around to profitability.
The first quarter, the management team was in place.
And the quarter ending December, Apple turned a profit of $47 million.
The last quarter, we turned a profit of $55 million.
So the company has made over $100 million in the last six months
in a very turbulent time in the industry
when other companies are breaking even or even losing money.
And I think that's a great accomplishment for the company.
In addition to that, the company is growing cash.
We increased the cash to $1.6 billion by adding $100 million.
in the quarter that ended December.
And for the last quarter that ended the end of March,
200 million more was put in the bank.
This is really important.
And lastly, last July, if you took the number of shares
outstanding and you multiplied it by the stock price,
the company was worth $1.8 billion.
We've added $2 billion to the worth of the company since then.
And I think it's just getting going.
So these are some indications about how Apple is back on.
So we went back to Business School 101,
and we said, what do our customers want in our products?
What kind of products do they want?
And they wanted two fundamental kinds of products.
They wanted consumer products, and they wanted pro products.
Our design and publishing customers primarily
wanted the pro products.
Our education customers primarily
wanted the consumer products.
But they also wanted two different kinds of each one,
desktop and portable.
And we looked at this and we said,
now, this looks pretty simple,
but we couldn't find a way
to come up with anything else
that captured what they wanted
as succinctly and as clearly as this.
We said, finally, this is it.
We've got to make four great products
and we can meet the needs
of what our customers are telling us they want.
And we've spent the last 10 months
working crazy to try to do just that.
So the first one was the Desktop Pro product,
the core of our publishing market.
And of course, we introduced that product in November
based on the G3 chip.
It's a Power Macintosh G3.
And we've had exceptional success with this product.
We've sold over 500,000 of these
in the first six months of the product's life,
making it the most successful new Mac in Apple's history.
Thank you.
The team did a superb job on this product.
It's based, of course, on the PowerPC G3 chip, which is a screamer.
Now, its competitor, of course, is the Pentium II.

Transcript

Machine transcript in the original language. It may contain errors. Select a timestamp to play that moment.

It's been 10 months since a new management team took over at Apple.

People have been working really hard.

You can see a lot of cars in the parking lots and nights and the weekends.

And because of their hard work, I'm really pleased to report to you today that Apple's back on track.

and because of this with the foundation this gives us we're going to announce some great

new products today and we're even going to roll out the whole product strategy today

we do i just want to spend a few minutes and take you through some examples of how apple is back on

track. The most important thing of course is people. Apple's got now a very wise

board of directors. Apple's got a very strong senior management team. I would

hold the senior management team at Apple up against any other in the industry.

But most important, Apple's got some very talented employees. Just incredibly

talented people. And when you have great people, the most important thing is to

not lose them.

When I came back to Apple last summer,

Apple was losing a lot of them.

The attrition rate annualized was 33%,

which meant that if Apple kept losing people at that rate,

in a year, a third of them would be gone.

And I'm very pleased to say that 10 months later,

the attrition rate is 15%, and that that

is under the Silicon Valley average today.

And that's a very good sign.

And part of that is because people now see how Apple can win again.

Another part of that is because we've made Apple a much more entrepreneurial place.

All of the key employees have lots of stock options.

Another key thing that we've done is distribution.

We've made a lot of changes in the way Apple distributes its products,

a lot of tune-ups across the distribution system.

And, of course, one of the bigger ones was at the national level partnering with CompUSA.

They're the biggest, and they decided to reinvest in Apple,

and it's worked out great.

As you know, they put an Apple store within a store

in each of their approximately 170 stores throughout the U.S.

When we started this program,

Apple represented 3% of the CPU revenues sold by CompUSA.

Six months later, Apple represents 15% of the revenues

of CPUs sold at CompUSA.

Another area that we can gauge to see Apple's health is the Internet.

Apple.com.

How many people are interested in Apple?

Now, we've got over 20 million active customers.

They might be interested in coming to our website.

We have tons of prospective customers who might be interested.

A lot of suppliers, a lot of software developers, a lot of competitors.

And so this taken together can give us a general thermometer of what is the interest level of people about Apple.

And we've invested a lot into the website and a lot into the award-winning Apple Store,

which is the gold standard of e-commerce now on the web.

And a year ago, we had a million hits per day.

Now, the average visitor clicks about 5 to 10 times, so that's 100,000 to 200,000 visitors per day.

Today, 9, 10 months later, we have 10 million hits a day on the website.

That's 1 to 2 million visitors a day coming to the Apple website.

And they're coming because they're interested in Apple.

Growth. The quarter that ended December, IDC reported that Apple had a 3.4% market share.

The quarter that ended in March, we actually grew our market share 15% to 4%. Now, we're

not thrilled with 4% market share, but if we can grow our market share 15% every quarter,

we will see it going in the right direction, which it is now. And I think we expect it

to rise quite a bit more based on some of the things you're going to see here today.

But it is now going in the right direction again.

And finance.

We have some pretty ambitious plans.

We want to develop a lot of great products.

We want to market them.

It takes money.

And our customers need to know that Apple's going to be here 10 years from now.

Well, we were able to turn the company around to profitability.

The first quarter, the management team was in place.

And the quarter ending December, Apple turned a profit of $47 million.

The last quarter, we turned a profit of $55 million.

So the company has made over $100 million in the last six months

in a very turbulent time in the industry

when other companies are breaking even or even losing money.

And I think that's a great accomplishment for the company.

In addition to that, the company is growing cash.

We increased the cash to $1.6 billion by adding $100 million.

in the quarter that ended December.

And for the last quarter that ended the end of March,

200 million more was put in the bank.

This is really important.

And lastly, last July, if you took the number of shares

outstanding and you multiplied it by the stock price,

the company was worth $1.8 billion.

We've added $2 billion to the worth of the company since then.

And I think it's just getting going.

So these are some indications about how Apple is back on.

So we went back to Business School 101,

and we said, what do our customers want in our products?

What kind of products do they want?

And they wanted two fundamental kinds of products.

They wanted consumer products, and they wanted pro products.

Our design and publishing customers primarily

wanted the pro products.

Our education customers primarily

wanted the consumer products.

But they also wanted two different kinds of each one,

desktop and portable.

And we looked at this and we said,

now, this looks pretty simple,

but we couldn't find a way

to come up with anything else

that captured what they wanted

as succinctly and as clearly as this.

We said, finally, this is it.

We've got to make four great products

and we can meet the needs

of what our customers are telling us they want.

And we've spent the last 10 months

working crazy to try to do just that.

So the first one was the Desktop Pro product,

the core of our publishing market.

And of course, we introduced that product in November

based on the G3 chip.

It's a Power Macintosh G3.

And we've had exceptional success with this product.

We've sold over 500,000 of these

in the first six months of the product's life,

making it the most successful new Mac in Apple's history.

Thank you.

The team did a superb job on this product.

It's based, of course, on the PowerPC G3 chip, which is a screamer.

Now, its competitor, of course, is the Pentium II.