Ann Macbeth Quotes

If you choose a market that already exists, say, networking equipment, you have to compete with an established company like Cisco. Even if your product is marginally better, Cisco can fudge it and outsell you.

'First to market' is simply a demarcation on a calendar. It really doesn't mean anything.

When I broke in, in 1957, it was wide open. Now you're up against strong competition.

Whatever you're selling, storage or networking or security, you're going head to head with the incumbent players.

The market is so competitive. There are so many products that are similar. So we are forced to invest in innovative research in new products that are one or two years ahead of the market.

Tomorrow I will have new competitors such as Google, Microsoft, and Facebook coming into my garden. I'd rather focus on the competition of tomorrow than combine with the competition of today.

A market is never saturated with a good product, but it is very quickly saturated with a bad one.

You've got to figure out how you're going to come in and significantly impact and redefine a market such that you become a market share leader in it.

The advantage of the consumer businesses is they tend to be much broader-based, much larger number of customers, that tend to over time be a lot more predictable. The advantage of the enterprise companies is they are not as subject to consumer trend, fad, behavior.

When you improve your product so it does the customer's job better, then you gain market share.

Leverage your brand. You shouldn't let two guys in a garage eat your shorts.

When you start losing market share, it's really tough to gain it back; you need the product portfolio and presence in many markets.

The trick is, a market has to be nonexistent when you start. If the market is large early on, you will have too many competitors. You have to make it large.

Apple makes really good products, and Samsung makes really good products. It's really a two-horse race. Where I think Apple is exposed: the price points of Apple's products are just so high by comparison with Samsung's.

When we look at investing, we always think about 'how defensible is this, how likely is it that somebody is going to copy this.' E-commerce tends to be something easy to copy because it's execution.

Someone is out there looking to put you out of business. Someone is out there who thinks they have a better idea than you have. A better solution than you have. A better or more efficient product than you have.

We don't go into a market without a chance of a 40 percent share and sustainable differentiation. We wouldn't get into wiring oil rigs if we didn't believe we could get 40 percent.

Our focus is to see that we are growing faster than the industry and, whichever product we launch, we do better than competition. We try and manage our operations better than competition. Essentially, we try to be better than what we were the previous year.

If you're entering anything where there's an existing marketplace, against large, entrenched competitors, then your product or service needs to be much better than theirs. It can't be a little bit better, because then you put yourself in the shoes of the consumer... you're always going to buy the trusted brand unless there's a big difference.

Firms that claim domain focus are late movers.

You've got to remember there's intense competition between Microsoft and Amazon.

I've never had difficulty dominating any market I've been in.

When a market isn't in transition, gaining market share is hard - you're fighting to take one or two points of share from competitors.

With the iPod - Apple's first successful stab at market dominance - Apple had begun with a high price but quickly dropped it.

In a marketplace where it's so easy to produce products, where your competitors can essentially match you on the product itself, you need to have something else. You need to have an added value, and that added value is the identity, the idea behind your brand.