The New Kingmakers by Stephen O'Grady

Author:Stephen O'Grady [Stephen O’Grady]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: COMPUTERS / History
ISBN: 9781449367916
Publisher: O'Reilly Media
Published: 2013-03-11T00:00:00+00:00

Courting the Developer Population

Getting It Right

Historically, appreciation for the importance of developers has been uneven, as have been corporate efforts to court the developer population. Developers require a distinct, specific set of incentives and resources. Here are five businesses that, in at least one area, understood the importance of developers and engaged appropriately.

Apple

In August 2011, a month after reporting record earnings, Apple surpassed Exxon as the world’s biggest company by market capitalization. This benchmark was reached in part because of fluctuations in oil price that affected Exxon’s valuation, but there’s little debate that Apple is ascendant. By virtually any metric, Steve Jobs’s second tenure at Apple has turned into one of the most successful in history, in any industry.

Seamlessly moving from hit product to hit product, the Apple of 2012 looks nothing like the Apple of the late nineties, when Dell CEO Michael Dell famously suggested that Apple should be shut down, to “give the money back to the shareholders.” It is no longer the leader in smartphone shipments, but according to independent analyst Horace Dediu, Apple regularly collects two-thirds of the industry’s total available mobile phone profits. Meanwhile, its dominance of the tablet market is so overwhelming that it’s being called “unbeatable” by industry observers. Which isn’t surprising, since a standalone iPad revenue stream would place it in the top third of Fortune 500 businesses. Even its forgotten desktop business is showing steady if unspectacular growth.

There are many factors contributing to Apple’s remarkable success, from the brilliance of the late Steve Jobs to the supply chain sophistication of current CEO Tim Cook. And of course, Apple’s success is itself fueling more success. In the tablet market, for example, would-be competitors face not only the daunting task of countering Apple’s unparalleled hardware and software design abilities, but the economies of scale that allow Apple to buy components more cheaply than anyone else. The perfect storm of Apple’s success is such that some analysts are forecasting that it could become the world’s first trillion-dollar company.

Lost in the shuffle has been the role of developers in Apple’s success. But while the crucial role played by Apple’s developers in the company’s success might be lost on the mainstream media, it is not lost on Apple itself. In March 2012, Apple dedicated the real estate on its website to the following graphic.

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