Steve Jobs is the world's reigning wizard of technological gadgets that are easy and fun to use. And he has parlayed his success into a massive fortune, collecting virtually no salary and earning billions in stock options on Apple stock that has risen to new heights under his leadership. With the success of the Ipod and all of its myriad manifestations, Jobs has created an expectations maelstrom that will be almost impossible to meet.
Yet many analysts are predicting that Apple's iPhone will not just meet those sky high expectations, but totally remake the way people use their cellphones. The iPhone is a revolutionary product. Not since Motorola released their Razr phone, which earned iconic status for its super-thin profile, has any phone so captured the public interest. The iPhone, which will initially retail for more than $500, promises to finally achieve the sort of perfect blend between software and hardware that has eluded all previous phones to date.
Jobs is planning to leverage Apple's masterful record of combining software and hardware expertise to create another product that functions significantly better than all of its competitors, which will shortly be reduced to producing insufficient knock-offs.
The Apple iPhone doesn't come out for some time yet, but the media feeding frenzy has been underway for quite a while. Regardless of whether the iPhone ultimately lives up to expectations, Apple stands to make a bundle on its legions of loyal customers who buy its products as much for their status symbol aspect as for the underlying technology.
Apple's real challenge therefore will be to somehow maintain their difficult balancing act as the world's leading technology gadget-makers. Hyping new products and then actually meeting heightened expectations has proved impossible for every other manufacturer in this sector, but Steve Jobs has exhibited a truly uncanny touch.
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