Orange CEO: Post-Jobs Apple’s easier to deal with

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“Apple has [become] more flexible, paying more attention to everyone else, probably a little less arrogant than they used to be,” France Telecom-Orange CEO Stephane Richard said during a dinner with reporters in Barcelona on Monday. Characterizing today’s Apple with the same company under Steve Jobs, Richard said, “I think they are probably a little more under pressure, and it is quite nice.”



  • nuttmedia

    Ahhh… the french… those well-known arbiters of arrogance

    • http://twitter.com/CoreyTamas Joel In Real Life

      Kinda like what the entire world says about the US? :)

      • nuttmedia

        indeed :)

  • http://mangochut.net/ mangochutney

    On the one hand: How’s Apple under pressure?

    On the other hand: What do you expect when a supply chain genius leads the company?

    • JohnDoey

      Apple is under pressure:

      • to try and make enough products to meet their unprecedented demand

      • to try and build enough stores to contain the unprecedented number of Apple Store customers

      • to figure out a way to share their unprecedented cash reserves fairly with shareholders

      • to counter the endless crybaby PR from heartbroken generic technology nerds who want their lost he-man build-it-yourself computing industry back

  • dr.no

    silly CEO wanted Steve to be his best friend. Tim Cook pretends to listen. BFF how precious.

    • JohnDoey

      Nailed it.

  • Tvaddic

    Since Steve passed the iPhone has lost some marketshare, so they can’t really demand much from the carriers.

    • JohnDoey

      Totally fact-free.

      • Tvaddic

        They don’t care about American marktetshare in the UK. And 2 some carriers have been dragging their feet on some iPhone features, to make money, and to potentially cut into some Apple sales. AT&T begrudingly rolled out FaceTime for cellular Also Tim is less aggressive than Steve, so that is most likely the difference.

    • http://twitter.com/CoreyTamas Joel In Real Life

      Wow. You just kinda went for broke on fictionalizing that one, huh?

  • Steven Fisher

    That’s a pretty sad state, since I can’t imagine Orange is trying to make changes that please customers.

  • JohnDoey

    “Arrogant” has been used as a propaganda word against Apple for many years — what the speakers really meant was “uppity.” They were telling Apple to “know its place.” They were saying, “sure, your hippie computers are find for effete designers and artists maybe, but don’t pretend you can compete with real he-man technologists like Microsoft or HP, or a real consumer electronics company like Sony or LG!”

    That put-down is now out-of-date. Apple is on top. That is the only reason that this dude thinks Apple is less uppity than before. He’s looking up at Apple now, not down.

    The irony is that true arrogance is when you think you’re the best but you are not. That is almost all of Apple’s competitors. Arrogance is thinking that Walkman or Windows or Palm or BlackBerry can’t be replaced.

  • http://twitter.com/CoreyTamas Joel In Real Life

    There’s one (and only one) translation for this statement: Apple isn’t telling them to shove it up their ass when they deserve to hear it as much as they used to.