No doubt. I note that WalMart had a nice business selling “stuff” to people with respectable margins. Then they decided to expand into grocery which has terrible margins and they have prospered in a whole new field.
I’m not saying you should look for a way to lower your overall margin, but if there’s aj opportunity maybe that shouldn’t be the first thing you think about. The size of the “car” market, worldwide, is far larger than “phones” in both absolute revenue and absolute profit dollars.
Also true. OTOH, I come from Westinghouse, where we had a pretty free-wheeling broadcasting division and a laced-up-tight nuclear division, with shipbuilding, finance, and assorted other divisions with entirely dissimilar corporate cultures. The trick was simple: keep them apart, except at the headquarters building. For some reason companies seem loathe to do that (see Berkshire for another exception) but it can be done.
I’m not arguing that this was a slam dunk - even in hindsight, I’m saying it was an opportunity missed, even if it had turned to nothing.
Would Steve have taken the meeting? I think he would. He was all about “Think Different”, although he was also smart about “simplify”, as the story of his takeover of the Mac line illustrates. He was a pretty flexible flyer - he started with computers and wound up running Pixar. Open minds, and all that.
Yep. Albaby pointed that out upthread. I don’t see why they couldn’t follow that model. Contract manufacturing has been used by lots of major auto manufacturers: BMW, GM, Daimler, Mercedes, Jaguar and others: