Imagine sitting on your own private jet – you’re high up in the clear sky, no clouds, things are clam and you’ve been given a flute of champagne to sip on. Then you look out the window, towards the land – and you see flames. Other planes burning up and some colliding in to each other. The land filled with chaos and you can only imagine people screaming their heads off.

But you don’t care – you’re mile above that problem and enjoying life.

The the above scenario is where Apple is at given the current worldwide economic crisis

You see, despite the thinking of cheap US$800 laptops that companies like DELL, Toshiba, Acer, Asus and others are churning out – that’s just not Apple’s style.

Sure we would all love cheap laptops, but we would look just like anyone else. Apple have a premium brand, with premium products and therefore premium prices to match.  During their recent launch of new laptops, Apple announced prices from US$999 up to US$2499. So the question is – if you like a good premium product – would you pay an extra $199? (Agree that some specs may differ)

People are willing to pay extra for that premium feel and ‘oh-so-awesome-one-click-mouse’. No doubt Apple has grown tremendously and maintained that reputation over the past few years – and Steve Jobs has done a hell of a job to keep his plane cruising at that altitude.

So why isn’t Apple down with the mess that the others guys are in?

You have companies below competing, trying to save costs, laying off staff, whipping sales people to make more cash and that just isn’t how Apple sees it. Yes, no doubt Apple’s margins will be a little lower and growth won’t be as before – but Apple’s sells to a market that is not a price-sensitive one and will not compromise on premium quality goods. Hence Apple doesn’t bring its price down nor sacrifices it’s brand.

You take the same case for car manufacturers – just because the current crisis affects people’s spending, we don’t see BMW or Mercedes bring down their sedan prices to match Toyota’s Camry?

It’s an economic dip that will affect BMW’s margins, but that’s reality. Like every other car manufacturer, they will take a hit. But when we all do recover from the economic issues, BMW will still maintain it’s reputation for a company producing quality cars.

Here is a quick Apple health check – the company has $20 billion in cash, no debts and the highest margin and growth rate it in the industry. If you see Apple’s stock price going down, it’s not because the company is in trouble – it’s because everyone else in the same industry will dip, and Apple economically follows suit.

Sources:
http://www.alleyinsider.com/2008/10/apple-won-t-get-crushed-by-the-recession
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/10/19/business/19digi.html

After reading about the rumours of Yahoo!’s layoffs, I then came across a screenshot of the new Yahoo! profile page:

Look familiar? If you use Facebook or MySpace, you would be looked a red-tinted-logo mirror image.

By having a Yahoo! account, users can add friend connections from it’s address book and write updates about themselves known as Yahoo Buzz (their activity feed).

This is all that is initially planned, however, Jim Stoneham (VP of communities, Yahoo!) stated that this is the “foundation release” which will then enabled Yahoo! to develop on further.

The Yahoo Buzz activity feed will soon be a widget on the Yahoo! homepage for logged in users to see what’s happening within their social group.

But Yahoo! is looking to make this integration within various areas of its website – for example, if someone reviews a product on the Yahoo Shopping page, it will be added to their activity feed for the user’s friends to take a look at. The same is planned for sections like Finance, Sports, Flickr et al.

This sort of social community could increase user interactivity of Yahoo!’s products and services. Back in September Yahoo had opened access to it’s social API and Yahoo Application Platform for developers to write applications around this framework. Sounds like the following of Facebook, Apple and Google.

I guess Gigaom was right after all – Social Network is just a feature (http://gigaom.com/2007/02/05/are-social-networks-just-a-feature/)

So the rumour goes around that more than 3,000 out of the 15,000 employees are expected to be axed from Yahoo!. But not without a party.

Yahoo! is throwing it’s annual multi-million dollar party in December – themed as a Las Vegas casino. The layoffs are rumoured to be around the 10th Dec, apparently days after the party will be held.

Why have a Las Vegas themed party costing millions – and then lay off your staff? I suppose Jerry wants to gamble that decision (no pun intended)

Not only that, but the rumour also states that the CFO is planning on cutting it’s employees’ severance package (that’s probably what’s paying for the holiday).

Recently, Rojeh Avanesian (Head of Finance, Yahoo! Santa-Monica media group) left and I suppose many more to follow on.