Mentors Magazine: Issue 3

MENTORS MAGAZINE | EDITION 3 | 37

panies that have totally transformed the
way they sell their products, and the way
they deliver them, and the way that they
service them and so on. So that... before
customers were not interested but now,
they are just love the product. And wher-
ever you see a great market success, a per-
son has actually really come up with a new
business model. And all the great success-
es today are new business models, new
ways of doing business that nobody ever
thought of before.

And one of the greatest, my favourite of all
is the iPhone. When they came up with the
iPhone, and they combined everything to-
gether in one phone, photographs, movies,
music, messaging, text, everything so that
you could communicate with everybody,
anybody, anywhere. And then they
changed the business model for music in-
stead of having to buy an album you could
buy music for one song at a time. And then
they changed the way of being able to
transfer pictures and movies and things
like that. They changed the business model
and they made it so easy that people could
have all the different things that they want-
ed in a communications device, all in one
place at a low price, and unconditionally
guaranteed.

And within 10 years, Apple was the richest
company in the history of the world, tril-
lion dollars... the first company to have a
trillion dollars in the bank. I remember
when they first came out with their phone,
I was using a Blackberry, and the market...
the world market was dominated by Black-
berry and Nokia, and they each had about

50% of the world market for cellular

phones. And they both came out and made

an announcement, that Steve Jobs had just

developed a high-priced toy, and that it

was only for teenagers and children who

wanted to communicate and send messag-

es and talk to their friends and so on.

Adults are interested in business phones,

what they want to do is communicate and

correspond on business matters, quickly, in

and out and so on.

And so they... Blackberry one of my favour-

ite examples, Blackberry in the year after

they brought out the iPhone, cut back their

research and development by 50% and

they said, 'we are so far ahead, our phones

are so good and they are so advanced, and

they are so current with the market, we

don't even have to improve them in any

way, as a matter of fact, we are going to

save the money and distribute it in profits

to our owners.

Five years later, both companies were

bankrupt, gone, gone. They went from 50%

each of the market to less than 1% and

then disappeared. And of course, Apple,

was copied by Samsung and then by many

others. But Apple came out with the most

profitable phone in the world. What they

did, was they changed the business model

and it was so great, everyone wanted to do

it.

Neil: You mentioned Nokia and Blackber-

ry, when Apple launched the iPhone. They

were much bigger than Apple in the

phone market at that time. Using your

measure of growth, how could they have