Netgear CEO Patrick Lo had a lot of interesting things to say yesterday at a lunch with journalists in Sydney. Like how Apple will need to go open after Steve Jobs “goes away”, and Microsoft is “over”. But in the face of a global PR backlash, it seems he regrets the way he expressed some of the things he said:
Lo sent out this alert to media this afternoon:
Hi. As many of you know I spoke in Sydney on Monday, at a lunch with more than a half dozen of Australia’s leading technology and business journalists. We covered a wide range of topics including the emergence of new IP protocols, cloud computing, wireless routers/repeaters in the home, the National Broadband Network (a current major Government project in Australia) and much more. During the course of the discussion, I shared my views about the future of Apple and Microsoft, as well as the surge of Android. Some of my comments were covered by the media who attended, and were reported more broadly outside Australia by media and bloggers who picked up on the story.
I stand by the opinions I stated on the business issues. Supporting open standards and environments in order to ease seamless networking integration of multimedia content is good for the consumer and good for content providers.
However, I deeply regret the choice of words I used in relation to business decisions Apple must grapple with in the future in relation to open vs. closed systems, which have been construed by some to be references to Steve Jobs’ health and which was never my intention. I sincerely apologize that what I said was interpreted this way, and I wish Steve only the very best.
Patrick Lo,
NETGEAR
Chairman and CEO
All I can say is that having sat at the event, I can honestly say that nothing Lo said was intended to be a personal attack on Jobs or even on Apple or Microsoft. But there were plenty of great quotes during the lunch, including Lo’s thoughts on the NBN, which we’ll share tomorrow.