Opinion: President Obama, Apple's record results, and you

By Jonny Evans

I listened to President Barack Obama's State of the Union adress. In his speech he exhorted the nation -- and, by inference, the world -- to innovate like Steve Jobs. No coincidence then that Apple [AAPL] last night delivered record results with business booming across all its sectors. What's Apple's secret? It has become this huge corporation through the simple yet complex expedient of Putting Users First.

We the people

That sounds simple enough, does it not? A company that designs the very best products it can, offers a strong supporting ecosystem around those products and which tries not to insult its customers by packing these devices with new features and abilities designed to meet needs those customers may not even know they need met.

A recap on Apple's results:

• Q1 revenue: $46.33 billion;
• Net profit: $13.06 billion;
• 37.04 million iPhones sold;
• 15.43 million iPads sold;
• 5.2 million Macs sold;

This company consistently delivers industry-leading customer satisfaction levels. A company which is grabbing market share across all its product lines. A company which, in the last quarter, outgrew the entire Android ecosystem in US smartphone market share. A company which has already delivered the foundations for a decade of cloud-based services. A company which dances beyond the puck, adroitly landing where that puck will be. If Apple were a surfer, it is a surfer that intuitively knows just where the next big wave is going to be.

And puts its users first.

It's about the mindset

While most boardrooms are full of sweaty executives wondering where they have gone wrong, it's different at Apple: "We're thrilled with our outstanding results and record-breaking sales of iPhones, iPads and Macs," said Tim Cook, Apple's CEO in a release. "Apple's momentum is incredibly strong, and we have some amazing new products in the pipeline."

New products which will no doubt combine world-class design and complex tech made simple inside devices which users find intuitive and easy-to-use.

Aside from being solid business sense, what's so important about Apple's focus on making complexity simple for its customers?

To me, it's refreshing. Look around at corporations worldwide and you don't see them focus on end users, but on the needs of the corporations. Many of us feel the planet is becoming more anodyne and the products and services we're being offered are becoming more second-rate as a result. But Apple puts the customer first -- and has become the world's biggest company.

Is it only me who sees the connection?

[ABOVE: Apple's achievements since 2001. Impressed, much?]

Simplicity sells, complexity matters

Think about it: from its relatively intuitive user interfaces to its world-class product design. From its decision to offer only best in class products in each of the fields in which it plays. From its advertising which focuses on what you can do with its solutions. All across the ecosystem of its product offering, Apple does one thing and does it great: puts the user first.

Critics will say I've traveled firmly up the fanboi aisle in this topic. Perhaps they're right. I think they are wrong. To me, faced with increasingly faceless corporations Apple seems increasingly to be the only company that puts one face on all its offerings, and that face is mine, or yours. It puts the user first.

That's radical. Why? Because as others reduce the value of the customer to profit margins, shareholder dividends and neat numbers on the wall chart, Apple gives the impression that profits are secondary to its main mission. To make great products. This rubber-clad philosophy has seen it through tough times and true.

And now has analysts citing target stock values of up to $650 per share. And a President who says America should, "support everyone who's willing to work; and every risk-taker and entrepreneur who aspires to become the next Steve Jobs." (I recall the camera panned to Jobs' wife, Laurene Powell at that point. I could see the light in her eyes shine with pride, and then fade to pain. My heart goes out to anyone who hurts, and it went to her then.)

It's about you

You are Apple's secret sauce. If you read those rare interviews senior company executives offer or read between the lines of its financial results announcements, you see its growth story isn't based on focusing inwardly on the company's needs, but hand-carved from its attempts to deliver what you, the customer, desire.

This shows the path to future success for other firms. Look around at the increasingly grim economic situation worldwide; Think about how bad news in one country is no longer an affliction for a place in isolation; we're in a global economy now, and what's bad for one is bad for all.

While some leaders focus on trimming the imaginary fat, tightening the imaginary belt or on forcing the poorest people to pay for the failures of the most well-off; Apple has consistently remained focused on its one mission: putting the customer first.

This simple approach gets results. Chris Weston, institutional trader at IG Markets, told the Independent: "It's hard to paint the numbers as anything but blowout, and clearly despite reasonably elevated expectations, they simply took consensus down to the woodshed and chopped it apart."

A user-focused century?

It's time, surely, that other corporations, governments and individuals recognized that keeping end users happy is an important force with which to shape the future. It isn't rocket science, really now is it? We are all the customers, and we should all come first. It's foolish to accept second rate when you can dream of better. As the environment suffers and as economies fail, we constantly hear the political rhetoric telling us we should all band together, but we seldom hear anyone credible share with us a direction we should all march together in.

Apple's success reflects its remarkable place within our times. It stands so high because its actions match the unrecognized ideas many of us share: that things can be better, that we don't need to settle for less, that we want the best. That we the billions of individuals sharing oxygen here on this planet matter, that we are important, that our desires and dreams and quarrels have value. We want leadership that puts the user first.

How unusual, then, that in so many cases larger firms fail to achieve this. So strange that so many deliver customer-focused services and products that seem cunningly designed by focus groups to deliver the best average for the rest of us. Think about it and you already know there's no such thing as an average human being.

Apple focuses on the user. I believe this is part of the philosophy which will shape the discourse of our age. If you see Apple as an artist then like any artist it reflects the life in which we find ourselves. A zeitgeist which demands big change in the corporate mind-set: it's time to put the users first. So what are we waiting for?

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