Nothing CEO Carl Pei is “unsure” if Apple CEO Tim Cook can transition to a war time CEO like Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft, company that has made sizeable investments in OpenAI, makers of ChatGPT. The big breaking news this morning was Apple’s high-profile Q2 2024 earnings call where Cook was seen pacifying investors with promise of AI and India as a silver lining amid a 4 percent decline in quarterly revenue.
The Apple CEO told investors that Apple had clear-cut advantages on AI over competing brands which put it in a very unique position in terms of technology enablement. The advantages he highlighted were a mix of hardware, software, and services integration, its groundbreaking silicon with neural engines, and a firm commitment to user privacy which underpinned everything it created.
Reacting to the news, Pei wrote on X, the platform previously known as Twitter, that Apple certainly had many pros including the fact that it made both its hardware and software and had a huge user base potentially with lots of data for harvest (though Apple is known to not have access to it, unless users explicitly give permission) but at the same time, it was bound by the “innovator’s dilemma” much like any other big tech company. But the thing that really stood out in the analysis was the uncertainty if Cook could transition to a war time CEO like Satya.
It’s no industry secret that Microsoft lost the fight on search but with AI, it’s been cruising, so much so that its growing success triggered a “red alert” inside Google to speed up its game. Microsoft under Satya Nadella has transitioned seamlessly into a highly competitive cloud services company and with AI, the duo is going for the kill. Nadella was fast as a gazelle to not only gaze its long-term potential but strategically putting it inside its existing products. The OpenAI investment, as many have pointed out, was a master stroke wherein he did not let the eponymous Sam Altman and team slip out, when things turned sour with the OpenAI board.
There is no denying that Apple has some catching up to do but as they say, every company’s journey is different and it will be interesting to see how things pan out for the iPhone-maker in the days to come.
