Two remarkable articles about Apple strategies from Haim Mendelson

I've been working with Haim Mendelson at Stanford's Graduate School of Business recently.  He shared two articles with me that should be of interest for our readers.

The first covers the iPod story, entitled "Apple and the Music Wars", published in August 2006.

The second covers the iPhone story, entitled, The iPhone: Apple's Third Act", published in February 2013.

Each support my contention that Steve Jobs would not have been able to 'exhibit his genius' at any other company because his track record was so ... spotty AFTER he returned to Apple, and after each of these imprimateur products launched and sold for two successive mediocre rounds

The mythology is that Jobs was perhaps the greatest genius of our age -- and I am not trying to dispel that fond belief.  But I would observe that the first SEVEN YEARS of his return to Apple in 1997 resulted in dramatically lower revenues (like, down by 40% and flat for 6 years) and profits that never recovered, and in fact for years 5, 6, and 7 were virtually non-existent.

Here's the revenue picture:

And here's the profits picture:

So, the question you might ask, is: "How did he keep his job?  Where were the activist shareholder dissidents?"

To request a copy or get permission to quote from Mendelson's two papers, email your request to Mendelson.Haim@gsb.stanford.edu