Yesterday after the bell, Apple reported financial results for their fiscal third quarter. And although impressive, they fell below Wall Street expectations. Apple’s stock is so far down about 5%. Many would say that’s well deserved after they delivered a net income increase of only 21% – for a total of $8.8 billion.
In any case, Zoho is not responsible for Apple’s earnings miss.
Let me explain.
Over the past few months, we at Zoho have bought about 2,000 devices for our employees – computers, phones, tablets. Yes, all of them Macs, iPhones and iPads. Although that’s one big order, that’s of course a drop in the bucket for Apple. In any case, we didn’t do it to help Apple either. So why?
Well, we did it for two reasons:
First is that we’re on a quest to create products with better look, feel and usability. Our new Zoho CRM which we launched some time ago and our new Zoho Sites products are two examples of this. Our earlier UI efforts were nascent, but some time ago we became “religious” about it. But… if you spend all of your day sitting in front of the ugly Windows UI, you’re going to feel less inspired when it comes to creating your own product. So we have upgraded most of our team to Mac. Yes, of course we are keeping some PCs around for testing purposes.
Second is that as we launch more and moremobile apps for our products, we want everyone in the company to be able to use them and test them in real-life. So that’s why we gave people a choice between iPhones and iPads.
I was just walking by the “Apple” room where our IT people are preparing the products for handing off to employees. They actually had to camp on a conference room as we don’t, well, do this often.
Yes, all those boxes in the back are full of Apple products. So – don’t blame Zoho for Apple’s earnings miss!
Rodrigo
Andrea - don't worry! We also of course have a range of Android devices to test our products on.
I am very worried. Are you able to test your apps on Android tablets?