“Yes, we’re talking about John Sculley, the former Apple CEO who was famous for firing Apple co-founder and creator, Steve Jobs. Sculley has huge success at Pepsi, but, unfortunately, his past success cannot ensure the same story in a gigantic tech company like Apple, one of the top technology companies at the time, and it appears that the history will repeat itself one more time.”
After leaving Apple, John Sculley has come to several businesses, and one of them is the smartphones business. Due to the lack of stylish mobile phone in the entry-level, the former Apple CEO has become co-founded for a startup company which launched two Android phones targeted at mid-range customers in Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. Apart from Sculley, Indian serial entrepreneur Neeraj Chauhan, Shane Maine, and Gordon McMillan were the other co-founders.
Two things people remember about Sculley in Apple must be:
First, when he famously left Pepsi-Cola after Apple co-founder Steve Jobs asked him to join Apple; and
Second, when he sacks the man who hired him.
Even though Sculley did not sack Steve Jobs on his own instead of the full support of the apple board at that time, that is still his biggest mistake in his long career.
Starting his company around 2015, Sculley’s company, Obi Worldphone, launched two phones called SF1 and SJ1.5. The company targeted developing markets outside the US to address the market need between high-design smartphones at high prices and generic smartphones at low prices.
Obi Worldphone tried to use the Silicon Valley innovations in design, technology, and high standards for manufacturing at low prices. The target market for his company is Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Kenya, Nigeria, Tanzania, South Africa, Pakistan, Turkey, and India. The company is aiming to get phones to 50 to 70 high-growth countries by 2017.
Sadly, his fortune in the tech industry looks not yet getting better, if not worse than his time in Apple. Just four years after his company failed to achieve the initial target, the company experienced internal conflict, much like the old Sculley story with Apple. The problem became apparent after Sculley distanced…