Kenny Hemphill
The journey from there to here, where it’s just about to leapfrog Exxon Mobil to become the biggest company in the world by market capitalisation, has been extraordinary. Much of what you will read in the coming months, when that landmark is reached, will focus on Apple CEO Steve Jobs, and the iPod, iPhone and iPad. And rightly so. For in the wider world, those are the names that are synonymous with the Apple brand. Without them, the company wouldn’t be anything like the one that we know today.
There’s much more to Apple’s transformation than just Jobs and the handheld devices, though. There are many unsung heroes in this story, without whom Jobs wouldn’t have been able to turn the company around.
One of the most important is Fred Anderson. Sadly, he left the company under something of a cloud following the stock options scandal a few years ago. By then, he’d already stepped away from the day-to-day running of Apple’s finances, but as its chief financial officer during the early, critical years of Apple’s transformation, he was crucial to the sound management of the company. It was Anderson, appointed CFO the year before Jobs’ return, who resolved the major liquidity crisis that Apple faced in the mid-1990s, when it was in debt to the tune of $63 million (about £40 million), and put it in a position where, by the time he retired in 2004, it had nearly $5 billion (about £3.2 billion) in the bank.
Anderson’s successor, Peter Oppenheimer, has also been crucial to Apple’s growth. The $5 billion Apple had in the bank when he became CFO is now $50 billion (about £32 billion), the kind of sum that would allow Apple to acquire some of the biggest companies in the industry without having to seek external finance. Its reporting of record quarter after record quarter is so common now that it’s almost a given. However, keeping control of costs is every bit as important a part of maximising earnings as producing great products. Additionally, there are very few CFOs, who could tell shareholders that the company is sitting on $50 billion in cash and hasn’t got a plan to invest it, nor use it to pay dividends, without facing a mutiny, which is precisely what Oppenheimer does every three months.
Then, of course, there’s Phil Schiller, Jobs’ trusted vice-president of worldwide product marketing. Apple as a company is almost as renowned for its marketing as it is for its products, and Schiller has been responsible for Apple’s marketing for the whole of the company’s remarkable growth. He might be seen as a figure of fun, and his stand-in keynote speeches may lack Jobs’ charisma, but the fact that he has held one of the four or five most important jobs in the company for such a long period tells you just how important a cog he is in the Apple wheel.
Tim Cook, Apple’s chief operating officer, may not have been around as long as Schiller, but he’s seen by many as the logical replacement for Jobs when he eventually retires. He filled in for Jobs while the CEO was on sick leave in 2004, and again last year. Cook is widely credited with closing down Apple’s factories and outsourcing production. That led directly to a huge reduction in inventory from levels that were crippling the company, to only a few-days’ worth. That feat alone dramatically improved Apple’s profit margins and helped it become the successful company it is today.
Then there’s Ron Johnson, the man responsible for setting up and overseeing Apple’s 300 retail stores around the world. Without those, Apple wouldn’t have the sales or brand recognition it enjoys.
Jonathan Ive’s role in Apple’s revival is well documented, but the relationship he has with Jobs, their single-minded vision of how every Apple product should work, how it should feel and how it should look is possibly the single most important factor in creating the company which exists today.
Perhaps Jobs’ greatest achievement at Apple has been to gather around him a team of the most talented senior managers in the industry. That, however, doesn’t make for quite as good a story as the one you’ll hear countless times in the coming months.
