At the unveiling of the iPad in San Francisco, Apple CEO Steve Jobs made it very clear that Apple should indeed be considered a manufacturer of mobile devices. In fact, he compared Apple’s business to the biggest mobile OEMs working in the industry today.
“By revenue,” Jobs said, “Apple is now the largest mobile devices company in the world. Bigger than Sony, Samsung, and by revenue, even bigger than Nokia.”
It’s probably no surprise that Tim Cook, Apple’s COO, reiterated those sentiments at Goldman Sachs’ technology conference in San Francisco yesterday afternoon.
“Yes, you should definitely look at Apple as a mobile device company,” Cook said, according to a live blog of the event from The Wall Street Journal. “We believe we are uniquely positioned for success in the mobile world because we can seamlessly integrate hardware and software.”
The ability to “seamlessly integrate hardware and software” has a lot to do with Apple’s ability to control its projects. The iPad was yet another demonstration of the lengths to which Apple will go in order to specify every aspect of its devices. The iPad features Apple’s own silicon in the form of the A4 processor.
Cook said that Apple keeps things simple in order that it can put all of its creative energy behind a narrow product line, which he says doesn’t affect the company’s bottom line. “The tables you are sitting at today, you could probably put every product on it that Apple makes, yet Apple’s revenue last year was $40 billion. I think the only other companies that can say that are the oil companies.”
While Cook’s comments weren’t exactly breaking news, they did offer insight into the way Apple views itself going forward, which is to say as a bona fide manufacturer of mobile devices.