Elon Musk is whistling past Tesla Motors' graveyard. The electric-car maker's chief executive has dismissed the threat from Apple as a potential competitor in the auto market. The iPhone maker's hiring of engineers from Tesla prompted him to tell a German newspaper: "If you don't make it at Tesla, you go work at Apple", and to refer to the $630 billion tech giant as the "Tesla graveyard". Musk's ventures - also including SpaceX and SolarCity - are impressive, but Michael Dell and Steve Ballmer, among others, can attest to the perils of underestimating Apple.
Dell's 1997 quote about what should be done to fix Apple probably takes the cake. "I'd shut it down and give the money back to shareholders." Apple has returned over 150 times investors' money since then, while Dell's company missed the shift to smartphones and other mobile devices and was taken private by its founder and Silver Lake two years ago. Dell doubled down in 2001, saying Apple would become the next Silicon Graphics, a company that went bankrupt.
Microsoft's seers were off the mark, too. Nathan Myhrvold, then the software firm's chief technology officer, said "Apple is already dead" when the company rehired Steve Jobs as CEO in 1996. Former Microsoft CEO Ballmer likewise dismissed Apple's phone ambitions. "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance." Microsoft's missteps in mobile technology eventually cost Ballmer his job.
Dominant phone makers were equally dismissive. Nokia's chief strategist said Apple would remain a niche maker of mobile phones two years after the iPhone's introduction. At Research in Motion, now renamed BlackBerry, the co-CEOs made equally dismissive claims, if less concisely.
The $30-billion Tesla has stolen a lead on both Detroit and Silicon Valley by producing a high-tech electric car that's desirable and popular at a premium price. There's more than a touch of Apple in how the cars are marketed and sold. The far larger tech group, though, is investing heavily in road-going tech. Perhaps Musk is right, and those ambitions will amount to little. But underestimating Apple's abilities has cost other tech luminaries dearly.
Dell's 1997 quote about what should be done to fix Apple probably takes the cake. "I'd shut it down and give the money back to shareholders." Apple has returned over 150 times investors' money since then, while Dell's company missed the shift to smartphones and other mobile devices and was taken private by its founder and Silver Lake two years ago. Dell doubled down in 2001, saying Apple would become the next Silicon Graphics, a company that went bankrupt.
Microsoft's seers were off the mark, too. Nathan Myhrvold, then the software firm's chief technology officer, said "Apple is already dead" when the company rehired Steve Jobs as CEO in 1996. Former Microsoft CEO Ballmer likewise dismissed Apple's phone ambitions. "There's no chance that the iPhone is going to get any significant market share. No chance." Microsoft's missteps in mobile technology eventually cost Ballmer his job.
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The $30-billion Tesla has stolen a lead on both Detroit and Silicon Valley by producing a high-tech electric car that's desirable and popular at a premium price. There's more than a touch of Apple in how the cars are marketed and sold. The far larger tech group, though, is investing heavily in road-going tech. Perhaps Musk is right, and those ambitions will amount to little. But underestimating Apple's abilities has cost other tech luminaries dearly.