Jonathan Ive: The iPhone Was Never About The Money

There is no getting around the fact that Apple’s iPhone was a huge game changer in the mobile space and has contributed greatly to Apple’s massive fortune since its very first release, but for as much money as it has made it almost didn’t get past the front doors of Apple.

This is according to Jonathan Ive, who is considered to be the design genius behind many of Apple’s amazing pieces of hardware, the iPhone included. In a post on the Telegraph site Apple’s chief designer told Katherine Rushton that Apple’s over arching goal isn’t about making money but rather create great products.

“Our goal and what gets us excited is to try to make great products. We trust that if we are successful people will like them, and if we are operationally competent we will make revenue, but we are very clear about our goal.”

If true this is an interesting decision by a company that was on the verge of bankruptcy but as Ive told a British Business conference that was Steve Jobs’ core belief.

“You would have thought that, when what stands between you and bankruptcy is some money, your focus would be on making some money, but that was not [Steve Jobs’] preoccupation. His observation was that the products weren’t good enough and his resolve was, we need to make better products. That stood in stark contrast to the previous attempts to turn the company around.”

As counter intuitive as that might seem the plan sure has worked out well for Apple.

via Slashgear

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Tags: Apple, iPhone, Jonathan Ive

About the Author

Steven Hodson Steven has been around the tech world long enough to see most of the stuff we think of cool happen before which leads to a certain bit of cynicism that has contributed to him being known as the cranky old fart of the Internet. Besides sharing some of the goodness that he finds with you here at 42x you can also find him curating some digital goodness at Winextra (tech type stuff) and Rotten Gumdrops (for your daily dose of WTF).