Steve Jobs Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 3750 words

Steve Jobs - Essay Example He was named as Steven Paul Jobs. In the year 1960, the Jobs family moved to Santa Clara which is popularly known as Silicon Valley. By the age of thirteen, he managed to get a summer job at HP. He was extremely good at computers and his instructors in schools wanted to skip him several classes ahead, which his parents declined. His interest in computers developed at an early age and he was inspired by the machinist work performed by his father. b) Professional career sketch of Steve Jobs Jobs dropped out of college in the very first semester and went to India in quest of spirituality. At the young age of 21, Steve cofounded Apple Computers with Steve Wozniac and Ron Wayne. Jobs was responsible for marketing Apple Computers and Wozniac headed the technical department of Apple and they started selling affordable computer solutions to Americans. The Apple Computers were smaller in size and could be purchased by the middle class American people. The organization further developed Apple II which became more popular and this resulted in augmented sales by around seventy percent. By the year, 1980, Apple Computers became a publicly traded firm and registered a market value of USD 1.2 billion on the initial day of trading (BusinessNewsDaily, 2013). Individual 2 Moving out of Apple The next few years witnessed a downfall in Apple due to serious flaws in designs and disappointment by consumers. Along with this, Apple faced stiff competition from IBM which had registered augmented growth in sales as compared with Apple. The Macintosh was released by Apple in the year 1984 and it was effectively marketed as a machine which was youthful, romantic and creative. Despite registering favourable growth in sales with Macintosh, Apple was still not able to effectively compete with IBM. This was because the computers designed by IBM were far more superior as compared with Macintosh. Following this, the then President of Apple, Scully believed that Steve Jobs was not able to steer the organization to a path of growth and subsequently Jobs had to resign from Apple in the year 1985. He commenced a new hardware and software firm known as NeXT, Inc. The very next year, an animation firm was purchased by Jobs which later came to be known as Pixar Animation Studios. The animation film studio produced successful and popular animated movies like The Incredibles, Finding Nemo and Toy Story. In the year 2006, Pixar merged with Walt Disney Studios and Steve Jobs became one of the largest shareholders of Walt Disney. Back to Apple Pixar Animation Studio resulted as an extremely successful business venture. However, NeXT Inc., failed to achieve success and was eventually acquired by Apple in the year 1997. In the year 1997, Steve Jobs again became the CEO of Apple. The success of Apple in the 1990s is credited to the business acumen of Steve Jobs. He formed a new management team, imposed himself to a salary of $1 per annum and modified the stock options, thereby leading t he organization into a path of success (The Wall Street Journal, 2011). The consumers became awed by innovative design solutions like iMac, iPad, iPod and the like, stylish designs and excellent branding and marketing campaigns and sale of Apple products soared ahead. c)