Could Board-Room Connections Between Microsoft and Apple Help iPhone Sales?

(NewsVisual, powered by IntellectSpace) -- Although these two high-tech icons are often viewed as cut-throat competitors, Apple Inc (NASDAQ: AAPL) could need the hands-on help, and not just the acquiescence, of its rival Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ: MSFT) in order for the former company to make its iPhone more appealing to business users.

The Wall Street Journal reported on Thursday that Apple reached a licensing agreement with Microsoft so that the former could use the Microsoft’s Exchange software, a program that’s used almost universally among business users, the article said.

Reaching this type of deal between two rival companies begs the question of how the negotiations between them began.

NewsVisual created an IntellectSpace Knowledge Map that shows that there exist two potential sets of connections between the companies’ Directors.  They are as follows:

Microsoft Director James I Cash and Apple Director Andrea Jung, who is also the CEO/Chairman of Avon Products, are most probably acquainted with each other through their service as members of the Board of Directors for the General Electric Co.

This personal connection between Jung and Cash could potentially be a back-channel of communication between the two companies whenever issues emerge that could be important to them.

Although the second set of links suggests a more improbably connection, it is possible that Apple Director Albert Gore Jr, 58, the former Vice President of the United States, knows Microsoft CEO/Director Steve Ballmer, 49,  through Harvard University.

Given their age differences, it’s unlikely they would have known each other as undergraduates.  However, it’s quite possible that they know each other through the University’s alumni association.

Click here for an interactive and fuller version of this IntellectSpace Knowledge Map.

(Note: the information contained and presented in Knowledge Maps is public information from the Securities and Exchange Commission of the United States of America).

Comments

[Byron Young]

ONLY loading with IE and window os makes IntellectSpace Knowledge Map a bad tool for showing anything connected to Apple.