It’s about time. Jobs showed his first NEXT machine in 1988 with a typical media splash. The kid who helped kick off the PC revolution was starting over after being pressured out of Apple Computer. NEXT predicted $100 million in first-year sales. But the technically innovative box didn’t sell, a victim of high price and poor marketing. Times are dicey for the industry–and analysts wonder if higher sales will translate into profits at NEXT, which recently laid off 5 percent of its 600 workers. But Jobs could be delivering on his early promises. He predicts a respectable $140 million in sales of 1991 models. He intends to take the company public within the next 18 months, which has some analysts drooling; John Maxwell of SoundView Financial Group says it will be a “hot deal.”
NeXT has always had trouble figuring out what it wanted to be when it grew up. After some success in universities, NEXT has lately targeted customers who need to design custom applications like Phibro’s. Unlike the usual programming method– writing software one line at a time-NeXT’s “object-oriented” system offers larger building blocks that developers can quickly assemble the way a kid builds faces on Mr. Potato Head. Just as desktop publishing brought the first Apple Macintoshes into business, fast programming promises NEXT entree, Jobs says. “But this time we’re getting invited inside the front door.”
What has brought respectability? NeXT’s rivals. When Apple and IBM inked a recent partnership, their goal-machines running a powerful operating system, Unix, but with the Mac’s friendliness-looked a lot like Jobs’s machine. He tweaked the giants in a full-page “in your face” Wall Street Journal ad: THE IBM/APPLE ALLIANCE WILL PUT POWERFUL SOFTWARE ON YOUR DESK IN THREE YEARS. CALL NOW FOR A FREE DEMONSTRATION. Not everyone is upbeat. Analyst Richard Shaffer of Technologic Partners, an early fan, now says that he believes it’s “not the best solution for any application.” Anil Gadre, Sun’s marketing VP, says the “boutique company” can’t beat Sun’s popular wares.
For all of Jobs’s cockiness, it’s a tough time to pioneer. The recession has stung all but the lowest-price firms, and Compaq recently ousted tech-oriented cofounder Rod Canion. Can any maker afford to be a technology leader now? Jobs sees these woes as his opportunity-to usher in the next stage of computing. It’s audacious. It’s risky. He wouldn’t have it any other way.
