Apple’s new campus still a long way off
 |
| Apple CEO Steve Jobs addresses the Cupertino City Council on April 18, 2006. Image: City of Cupertino |
 |
| According to city maps, the site of Apple’s new campus will be bounded by Interstate 280, Wolfe Road, Pruneridge Avenue and Tantau Avenue. Image: City of Cupertino |
Steve Jobs’s plans for a new Apple campus in its hometown of Cupertino, Calif., are taking a little longer than expected to become reality.
Two years ago this month, the Apple (AAPL) CEO made a surprise visit to a Cupertino City Council meeting to deliver big news: Apple had been looking for an additional site for its growing workforce, and considered leaving its longtime home. But the company managed to cobble together nine pieces of land about a mile from Apple’s current digs, and decided to stay in Cupertino after all, using both locations.
“We haven’t started designing anything yet,” Jobs said at the April 18, 2006 meeting. “It’ll take us, you know, three or four years to design it, get all the approvals and get it built.”
Apple can easily afford any building project. With nearly $19 billion on hand, it has the third largest cash reserves in the tech world, behind Cisco (CSCO) and Microsoft (MSFT). Even so, Jobs said two years ago that Apple paid more for the Cupertino site than it would have paid in other Silicon Valley cities, though he expected it will be worth it once Apple builds a second campus in Cupertino to accommodate between 3,000 and 3,500 people. “It’s going to cost us more than we’d like,” he said, “but hopefully in five years we’ll have forgotten about that and we’ll just have a second nice campus in Cupertino.”
An Apple spokesman pointed out that Chief Financial Officer Peter Oppenheimer said in an earnings call that month that Apple hoped to break ground “in a few years.” He also said that Apple would “hopefully complete a second campus in around four years,” according to a transcript.
Those timelines might have been ambitious. Two years after the announcement, Apple has not applied for permits to build on the site, confirmed Ciddy Wordell, a project manager for the city of Cupertino who is in charge of the North Vallco development area where the new Apple land is located. “They must go through a planning approval process, get a use permit and an architectural review,” Wordell said. “It might even involve a general plan change.”
Once all of that is done, it often takes about two years for a major construction project to be completed. So unless Apple gets its campus plans moving more quickly, it looks like the whole ordeal could drag on a bit longer than Jobs had hoped.
Happy 32nd birthday, Apple
 |
| The iPod touch exemplifies Apple’s maturity. Image: Jon Fortt |
Corporate birthdays aren’t often celebrated unless they’re multiples of five; but since Apple (AAPL) is so popular and its birthday falls on April Fool’s Day, it’s easier to remember.
So today, Apple turns 32. CEO Steve Jobs is fond of recounting how the company started in his parents’ garage, a location that was an obvious homage to Hewlett-Packard (HPQ), the original Silicon Valley startup. The company has done pretty well for itself since; it can boast more than $18 billion in cash, no debt, and more than $25 billion in annual sales. Co-founder Jobs, once pushed out of the company, returned 11 years ago to save it in epic style.
It is the rare company that manages to pass out of young adulthood while maintaining its aura of cool, and it hasn’t been an easy journey. The first decade of Apple’s life defined it as a prodigy, with its high-flying IPO and Mac-fueled dreams of changing the world. Its second decade was more sobering; in its teenage years Apple fell from its lofty perch, hobbled by poor management and erratic focus. It took a third decade of young adulthood for Apple to regain its footing and prove itself worthy of its early promise as it built on the success of the iPod and iTunes, and fastidiously stockpiled cash.
What next? Apple is now working to make sure it doesn’t repeat the mistakes of its teenage years. Rather than cling to a go-it-alone strategy as it did back then, today’s Apple has reached out to Intel (INTC) for its chips, to Microsoft (MSFT) for its enterprise e-mail software, and to multiple global wireless carriers including AT&T (T) for its iPhone service. The company is striving to maintain the artful control that made it a prodigy without falling victim to the hubris that nearly led to its demise.
And along the way, Jobs & Co. continue to spin one of the most fascinating tales in tech. Here’s to your health, Apple.
Dell plant closure marks the end of an era
Michael Dell is still struggling to reclaim his company’s former glory, and the latest cutbacks show he still has a long way to go.
Dell (DELL) said Monday that it will close an Austin, Texas plant that makes desktop PCs. It’s just the latest step in a plan management laid out nearly a year ago, in which the company plans to shed 8,300 workers and save $3 billion in costs. The remarkable thing about Dell’s announcement isn’t the simple shuttering of a U.S. manufacturing facility – that sort of thing is happening across the country every day. It’s how precipitously Dell has fallen.
Motorola’s split decision may be the wrong call
 |
| Devices like the Razr2 V8 haven’t done enough to raise Motorola’s profile and its revenues. Image: Motorola |
 |
| CEO Greg Brown says splitting the company will improve Motorola’s focus. Image: Motorola |
The year is 2010, and the Motorola brand is hot again. By aggressively retooling its design and manufacturing processes, the independent cell phone business has returned to profitability, grabbed back market share from Samsung and Sony Ericsson, and gained on Nokia (NOK) with low-cost handsets in developing markets like India and China.
Meanwhile, in its separate wireless equipment business, Motorola has outmaneuvered tech titan Cisco (CSCO) in the corporate market, and out-innovated both Cisco and Apple (AAPL) by reinventing set-top boxes that bring the Internet to the TV. Investors are thrilled, and they trace it all back to Motorola’s (MOT) breakup announcement in March 2008.
Sound like a fantasy?
Odds are, that’s all it is – and that’s the downside to the Schamburg, Ill., company’s announcement Wednesday that it will split itself in half in 2009. Though the news is probably music to the ears of activist investor Carl Icahn, who has been agitating for a breakup to boost Motorola’s flagging stock price, it’s difficult to see how two mini-Motos will be better positioned to compete with some of the best-managed competitors in the technology world.
Motorola CEO Greg Brown sees the spin-off differently. “I think it provides a clear sense of our intentions and direction,” Brown tells Fortune. “The independence, improved focus and alignment of individual organizations will facilitate and enable stronger performances.”
We’ve been here before, however. In previous slumps, Moto management hocked heirlooms like the automotive and semiconductor divisions in the name of raising money and gaining focus. Did it work? Well, if trimming divisions were the recipe for its success, Motorola would be thriving by now. Instead the firm has swung from a $3.6 billion profit in 2006 to a $49 million loss in 2007, and the stock is flirting with five-year lows. Motorola’s problem isn’t size – it’s discipline. “Every time they go back to the drawing board, they start talking about selling off businesses, splitting up the company,” says Shawn Campbell, of Campbell Asset Management, who has followed Motorola for years. “They’re running out of things to sell.”
Microsoft Surface: consumer version in 2011?
 |
| Microsoft Surface is a tabletop computer that’s controlled by physical touch instead of a mouse or keyboard. Image: Microsoft |
Microsoft’s tabletop computer could appear in homes in three years or less, the executive in charge of its development said this week.
Since unveiling the Microsoft Surface product last year, the company has gotten plenty of feedback from businesses and enthusiasts who want to get their hands on the technology, said Tom Gibbons, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s (MSFT) Specialized Devices and Applications business. And Gibbons said he feels confident that the touch-based computer could be affordable enough for consumers in three years or less. “In the three-year time window, we absolutely see how to get there,” Gibbons said. “If we can beat that, we’ll try to beat that.”
Surface is a computer built into a coffee table, and its 30-inch screen is controlled by touch rather than by a mouse or keyboard. (The complex manufacturing, of course, makes it expensive — the commercial version will be priced between $5,000 and $10,000) Though the concept is similar to Apple’s (AAPL) touchscreen iPhone, the implementation of the technology is quite different. Surface works using digital cameras under the glass, which track movements above.
Microsoft looks to cash in on the iPhone
 |
| Microsoft has a profitable business building software for the Mac; now it has an eye on the iPhone, too. Image: Apple |
 |
| Tom Gibbons, head of Microsoft’s Specialized Devices and Applications Group, said the focus would be on extending Office functions onto the iPhone and iPod touch. Image: Microsoft |
Don’t think for a minute that Microsoft is ignoring the iPhone. In fact, the software giant is probing the gadget for profit opportunities.
For a little more than a week, a team of the company’s Silicon Valley software engineers has been examining the iPhone software development kit (SDK for short), a set of tools Apple (AAPL) released this month that let outsiders build software for the iPhone and the iPod touch. Microsoft (MSFT) executives aren’t sure yet whether they’ll find worthwhile opportunities to sell iPhone software – but they seem eager to find out.
“It’s really important for us to understand what we can bring to the iPhone,” Tom Gibbons, corporate vice president of Microsoft’s Specialized Devices and Applications Group, told Fortune on Monday. “To the extent that Mac Office customers have functionality that they need in that environment, we’re actually in the process of trying to understand that now.”
Though it’s typical to think of Apple and Microsoft as pure software rivals, their relationship is actually more complicated. For more than a decade, Microsoft has maintained a group of engineers whose sole job is to develop software for Apple’s Macintosh operating systems. Most of the engineers in Microsoft’s Mac Business Unit are based in Mountain View, Calif., a few miles from Apple’s headquarters. (They also happen to be quite close to the headquarters of archrival Google (GOOG).)
The Mac unit’s work certainly isn’t charity – it delivers millions of dollars in profit for the company with its Mac version of the Office productivity suite. Microsoft doesn’t break out exact numbers, but we can extrapolate: Gibbons said the Mac Business Unit provides about a third of the revenue for the Specialized Devices and Applications Group, which also includes Windows Embedded, Microsoft Hardware, the Automotive Business Unit and Microsoft Surface Computing; the whole group did more than $1 billion in sales last year. So it’s reasonable to guess that the Mac unit provided about $350 million – and since Gibbons said the Mac group was one of the group’s more profitable units, it’s possible that Microsoft made somewhere in the neighborhood of $200 million in profit from Mac software.
Flash vs. hard drive battle heats up
 |
| Lenovo’s critically acclaimed ThinkPad X300 laptop does without a hard drive. Image: Lenovo |
While munching on a reuben at Birk’s, a steakhouse in Silicon Valley, Seagate (STX) CEO Bill Watkins is explaining why he’s not too worried about a these trendy new laptops that have everything but a hard drive.
On the surface, this would seem to be a big problem. Seagate, after all, is the world’s largest hard drive maker with expected sales of more than $3 billion this quarter – so Watkins likes to see his wares go into more gadgets, not fewer. It’s easy to see why he tends not to favor devices like Lenovo’s sleek ThinkPad X300, which is winning raves for its light weight and silent operation, and its 64-gigabyte flash storage drive.
Yahoo’s last chance
 |
| In six weeks, Yahoo will get one more chance to prove it can turn things around without Microsoft. Courtesy of Yahoo. |
 |
| Yahoo stock spiked after Microsoft’s bid, reclaiming levels it last saw in November when investors were more optimistic. |
Six weeks ago, Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer sent shockwaves through the tech world when he offered more than $40 billion to buy Yahoo. And about six weeks from now, Yahoo’s unwilling executives may have their last, best chance to wiggle free of Ballmer’s grip.
That’s because late next month, Yahoo will present its latest earnings numbers to Wall Street. Investors will pick through the sales and profit numbers, ask incisive questions, and potentially bid its stock price up or down, effectively tipping the scales in favor of either Yahoo (YHOO) or Microsoft (MSFT).
It could be Yahoo’s final opportunity to prove it can thrive on its own. For nearly a year, investors waited for CEO Jerry Yang to deliver his promised shakeup and begin taking market share from Google (GOOG). But Yang was slow to trim staff or make other changes, and the stock lost nearly a third of its value on his watch. That set the stage for Yahoo’s annual meeting sometime this summer, where Microsoft is expected to try ousting Yahoo’s board and installing directors who will bless its takeover plans.
Analysts don’t expect much from Yahoo. On average, they expect revenue of $1.32 billion, which is at the low end of the range that executives gave in January.
Re-engineering HP Labs
 |
| HP Chief Strategy and Technology Officer Shane Robison says the reorganization of HP Labs should speed innovation and eventually boost profit margins. Image: HP |
Now that it’s an undisputed turnaround story, Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) is looking for ways to fuel long-term growth. An important piece of its plan is HP Labs, a group of 600 top-flight researchers who work to develop breakthrough technologies. To better position HP Labs as a growth engine, the company announced Thursday that it will refocus its efforts on five areas: Information explosion, dynamic cloud services, content transformation, intelligent infrastructure and sustainability. (Earlier: Turning an idea farm into a hit factory)
I sat down with HP strategy and technology chief Shane Robison to talk about the research shift, and what it means for the company. Below is an edited transcript of our chat.
Apple’s business call
 |
| With the addition of Microsoft Exchange, the iPhone is open for business. Image: Apple |
Steve Jobs sent a clear message to the technology world Thursday: Apple wants it to view the iPhone as an opportunity, not a threat.
To drive that point home, Jobs gave up the stage for most of Apple’s (AAPL) highly anticipated software event at its Cupertino headquarters. Rather than hog the spotlight with his legendary presentation skills and personality, he let deputies and partners explain how entrepreneurs can start writing their own software for the iPhone, and how businesses can use the device to seamlessly access corporate e-mail.
No comments:
Post a Comment