When Steve re-joined Apple he was confronted with a huge product lineup.
It was too complicated for him to understand. This made clear that the products were also hard to sell.
He scrapped most of the produt lines (and teams) and created a 4 product matrix: Consumer, Professional, Mobile and Portable.
- consumer mobile: iBook
- consumer desktop: iMac
- professional mobile: Powerbook
- profiessional desktop:
The lession is clear: It's all about simplicity and focus. Jobs achieved this. Many companies are doing this from time to time (Google Reader anyone?). Any you should do this, too.
But to be honest: If we look at the Apple of 2021 - can we still see this product matrix?
I think we rather see the huge product lineup that Steve saw when he joined apple more than 20 years ago.
Let's see how this turns out for Apple.