Disney CEO Bob Iger revealed in an interview yesterday that Apple and Disney could have become one company if Steve Jobs, inventor of the iPhone, iPad and a thousand other things, hadn't fallen ill and then died in 2011.
I think if Steve was still alive we would have merged our businesses. Yes, yes we would have discussed this possibility very seriously
Bob Iger, Disney Chief Executive Officer
Iger has gone a long way on this circumstance and on the relationship with the CEO Apple in a small presentation he made for Vanity Fair in his new book, to be released on September 23, which is called The Ride of A Lifetime: Lessons Learned from 15 Years as CEO of the Walt Disney Company.
Iger was for a long time a great friend of the boss, co-founder of Apple and CEO Jobs, and he wrote about a rather intense period, in which the two absolute giants of entertainment and information technology came to touch each other, indeed they actually ' kiss each other, even if for a moment.
2006, the year of contact
It was 2006, and Disney bought Pixar. A company that would make the fortunes of the house of Mickey Mouse in the years to come, and which could only be directed and managed by a great inventor and visionary: Mr. Steve Jobs CEO of Apple. A year of great vigils and hopes. From the following year, in 2007, Disney would begin to churn out one success after another (from Ratatouille to UP), sanctioning the definitive relaunch. For Apple, well…for Apple, 2007 would have been a year to be summed up in one word: iPhone.
Maybe because he had a nose for the future, but it was precisely in that year of great anticipation that Apple CEO Jobs continually told Iger that the merger of the two companies would be the best thing.
“[Steve] was certain that Pixar would grow much more with Disney than by remaining independent, and also that Disney would flourish again by acquiring Pixar. And he thought the same about Disney and Apple,” writes Ger.
The history of iTV
Iger worked with Jobs on this idea and others, also already advanced for the time: Disney was the first company to provide content for the newborn iPod Video. On that occasion, Iger spoke to Jobs about his idea of creating an iTunes platform for TV. It would have been called iTv. He would have anticipated Netflix by at least two years, and the Apple and Disney projects (AppleTV and Disney + will only be born now) would have been merged and anticipated by 13 years.
From that almost magical moment to Jobs's illness, the step is short. We all know what Steve Jobs was ill with, what he died of, Steve Jobs' illness has become a collective drama in the technological world. And we also know what happened immediately afterwards. The triumph of the iPhone on the one hand and Disney/Pixar productions on the other cooled the projects, but it was with the death of Steve Jobs in 2011 that the merger plans were completely abandoned.
With Steve Jobs dead everything has changed
We will never know what a giant who brings together Disney and Apple would have made: And the death of Steve Jobs leaves a bad taste in the mouth for a period in which both leaders were in the same boat. Both. Steve Jobs and Bob Iger. How would this union have transformed, for example, the interaction between users in theme parks? Would the strong push for imagination and the fantasy realms born from the mind of another Jobs, the old Walt who died when Steve was 9, also influence the new Apple devices?
Several things would have changed. Steve Jobs's biography is not very comprehensive in this regard, but Iger's is clear. Such a merger would have totally changed the market, and the development of new groups in the fields of technology, entertainment, information technology and animation.
