For many Australian consumers, the first thing they think about when they consider the legacy of Apple founder Steve Jobs will be sitting in the palm of their hand – the iPhone, the iPod and the iPad have become such powerful symbols of the genius of Jobs and Apple.
But what has always struck me about Jobs is the fact that he didn’t just create brilliant products. At least two of his greatest innovations could be considered to have created entire industries, or at least allowed struggling sectors to flourish.
While the iPhone and iPad are brilliant products, I have always thought that the real genius of these devices was the way Jobs and Apple created content markets that sat behind them in the form of the iTunes Store and the App Store.
Jobs realised that content is king in the digital world. It was no good building a sleek, beautifully designed device with the power of a small laptop if you couldn’t listen, watch, play and use content on it.
The way the iTunes and App Stores were set up – such that Apple gained the right to approve what was sold in them and took a 30% cut of any items sold– guaranteed the company’s devices would continue producing revenue for Apple long after that initial sale. This closed ecosystem is hated by many users, but it’s hard to deny it’s very, very smart.
But while the Apple markets may have been closed in many ways, they did open up a range of entrepreneurial possibilities for businesses that saw the opportunity to sell products to a rapidly-growing marketplace.
No more was this true than in the App Store, where hundreds of thousands of software developers – particularly those developing games – seized the chance. The bar, at least initially, was relatively low. Armed with a developer’s kit and time, games could be created over a weekend and generating revenue the next week.
As well as the army of start-up app developers, the App Store allowed some genuinely huge businesses to be built, even here in Australia.
Rob Murray, founder of games studio Firemint, enjoyed huge success with his games, most notably Real Racing. After a few years he was able to merge with another Australian games studio (Infinite Interactive) and in July he sold his business to US giant Electronic Arts for an estimated $40 million.
A few weeks ago, Murray appeared on the BRW Young Rich list with a fortune of $24 million. Fellow app developer Andrew Lacy, who sold his development company Tapulous to Walt Disney, was valued at $20 million.
Would this have been possible had Steve Jobs not created an ingenious platform for entrepreneurship? I am not sure.
While the iPhone and the iPad will always carry Steve Jobs’ DNA, the pace of change at a company such as Apple means that updated models will arrive very quickly. Eventually, they may in fact become some other designer or CEO’s products.
But the impact of the App Store and iTunes Store will live on for much longer. Hundreds of thousands of developers have been given the chance to launch their own little businesses on this platform.
Some have made huge businesses out of this opportunity. The vast majority haven’t. But the creation of this market has allowed so many people to get a taste of entrepreneurship – who knows what great companies this could create in the future.
That’s a pretty amazing legacy to leave behind.
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James was the editor and publisher of SmartCompany and LeadingCompany for five years. He is now the Australian Financial Review‘s companies & markets editor, and a former BRW editor.
