This site uses cookies. By continuing to browse the site you are agreeing to our use of cookies.  > Find out more here

 
All the latest UK technology news, reviews and analysis

A year on from Steve Jobs’ death, Apple and Oracle face similar challenges

by Madeline Bennett
05 Oct 2012
View Comments
  • Tweet this
V3's Madeline Bennett

Oracle OpenWorld 2012, which took place this week in San Francisco, was a more subdued affair than last year’s show, but for all the right reasons from Oracle and chief executive Larry Ellison’s point of view.

Oracle Openworld 2011 was opened and closed by Apple, with Larry Ellison using his opening keynote to tell the thousands of delegates that the firm was the Apple of the enterprise world, in that both firms marry hardware and software.

Just three days later, as Ellison was partway through his closing keynote at the Moscone centre, news travelled around the conference room that Apple chief Steve Jobs had passed away.

Ellison, a good friend of Jobs’, was hurried off the keynote stage, and all the OpenWorld announcements of the previous week faded away as shockwaves burst across the world about the loss of one of the IT industry’s greatest ever innovators.

A year on, and both firms are facing new and similar challenges to preserve their positions at the top of their respective games.

Apple and Oracle have many similarities. Both are famous for having risen through the ranks due to a determined, single-minded and hands-on leader, favouring the ‘my way or the highway’ style of management. Both are sitting on huge cash piles. Both have managed to succeed despite, or perhaps because of, their integrated systems approach, choosing to enforce in Apple’s case, and promote in Oracle’s, the notion of hardware and software engineered to work together.

But the gap widens between the two firms when innovation comes into the picture. While Apple is famous for knowing what its users want even before they’re aware of its existence, and under Jobs, created entire new modes of computing, Oracle gradually catches up with the crowd a few years after everyone else has accepted the latest trend, whether it’s cloud, social or multi-tenancy.

With the death of Jobs, doubts surfaced immediately over whether Apple could retain its crown. While Jobs appeared arrogant and dismissive in his approach to his customers and the world in general - never better highlighted than his response to initial complaints about antennagate, blaming it on iPhone 4 users holding their phones the wrong way and insisting that other vendors suffered the same problems - his successor Tim Cook is a different type of leader entirely.

Only last month we had Cook facing a similar scenario, with ‘Mapsgate’. I can just hear Jobs’ response: iPhone users shouldn’t choose to live in back waters, and it must be the fault of those early cartographers for getting world geography wrong.

Cook, no doubt, had those thoughts echoing in his head too when making the decision on how to respond to the barrage of criticism the firm was facing over the woeful early performance of Apple Maps, after wiping Google Maps from the iOS ecosystem.

But instead of following the Jobs way, Cook took the opposite tack and within a few days had issued a full and grovelling apology, even going so far as to suggest that iPhone users make use of Google Maps via the browser.

Do you agree
blog comments powered by Disqus
Poll

Apple iOS 7 redesign poll

Will you be updating your iPhone to the new version of the operating system unveiled by Apple?
17%
2%
6%
2%
73%

Popular Threads

Powered by Disqus
HTC One vs Apple iPhone 5 head to head review

iPhone 5 v HTC One head to head video review

V3 pits top devices against one another ahead of Samsung Galaxy S4 launch

Updating your subscription status Loading
Connect with V3.co.uk

Sign up to our daily or weekly newsletters

newsletter sign-up button
mimecast

Postini migration – 5 easy steps

The clock is ticking for Postini users that don't want to move their email management to Google Apps.

acquia

How to keep up with the speed of the web through open source

Build great digital experiences at the speed of the web

Informatica consultant

Description Develop code for data population to Staging...

Application Packager APP V 4.5, 4.6 (MSI, WISE)

My client are a leading consultancy, and are now looking...

Application Packager App-V, 4.5, 4.6 (wise msi)

My client are a leading consultancy, and are now looking...

MS Solution Consultant (Desktop Deployment, SCCM ,SMS)

Microsoft Solutions Consultant/Pre Sales Consultant SCCM...
To send to more than one email address, simply separate each address with a comma.