By the balls
This week, we all saw a very big fight between the richest man in the world and the richest company in the world. Those who were hoping for a nuclear exchange between Elon Musk and Tim Cook at Apple must have been disappointed when they made peace.
Who won? For that matter, what was it really about? Was that really a fight?
Mr. Musk is trying to diversify the revenue stream for Twitter and create a place where Twitter users are known entities. For that - the blue check mark - Mr. Musk wants to charge $8 a month. Rolling out the feature to its customers, the first will be Twitter users through the iOS app.
That’s where Mr. Musk went on offensive and questioned why he has to pay 30% of any in-app charge to Apple. He’s not the only one: Spotify’s CEOdecided he wanted to make a big show of getting angry, for the same reason – having to pay Apple’s app surcharge - it will lead to the same result. A string of lawsuits from developers will keep coming and are not unique to Apple. Google gets into its own share of trouble as well.
It got silly when a user tweeted, "If Apple & Google boot Twitter from their app stores, @elonmusk should produce his own smartphone. Half the country would happily ditch the biased, snooping iPhone & Android. The man builds rockets to Mars, a silly little smartphone should be easy, right?"
Mr. Musk replied: "I certainly hope it does not come to that, but, yes, if there is no other choice, I will make an alternative phone."
Mr. Musk’s threat of creating a new phone was an empty one. Building rockets to Mars is one thing. Creating a new smartphone company in a saturated marketplace? With the only differentiator that you can have Twitter on your phone (with guaranteed no access to the Apple or Google app stores)? All at a time when everyone in the world knows he is bleeding cash?
Maybe Mr. Musk thought he could throw his weight around because Apple had another big PR problem on its hands this month: its iPhone factory in China faced a violent worker’s revolt. But longer term, this is basically a PR issue for Apple. They’ll handle it (and are already handling it - some of Apple’s production has already moved away from China).
To make its point, Apple - one of large advertisers on Twitter, to the tune of $100 million a year - withdrew the advertising dollars. Even if Apple resumes advertising, at any time, it could just stop, saying Twitter isn’t doing enough to fight this or that misinformation or abuse… game over. Twitter needs access to mobile platforms – but suddenly both Apple and Google are hinting that there might be an issue with Twitter.
In the end, Mr. Muskn came crawling to Mr. Cook’s office to calm things down, not the other way around. He came down from his high horse with this tweet: Good conversation. Among other things, we resolved the misunderstanding about Twitter potentially being removed from the App Store. Tim was clear that Apple never considered doing so.
Apple has all the advantages here. Twitter needs Apple, Apple doesn’t need Twitter.
It turns out that being the head of the world’s richest company is a more powerful role than being the world’s richest man.
It wasn’t even close to a fight, it was a nuisance.
Sun Tzu has said, “If you know the enemy and know yourself, you need not fear the result of a hundred battles. If you know yourself but not the enemy, for every victory gained you will also suffer a defeat. If you know neither the enemy nor yourself, you will succumb in every battle.”
The recurrent pattern here? Before you pick a fight, make sure that you learn from the old masters. Otherwise you might get this uncomfortable, tight feeling down below.