Dubai: Khansa Al-Zubayr
Paul Krugman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist, said that the Tesla electric car company cannot become a profit-making machine like Apple and Microsoft, because this is not possible in the automotive field.
Krugman added, in statements to Yahoo Finance recently, that Tesla cars are unlikely to benefit from the impact of some people rushing to a product such as Apple’s iPhone and Microsoft’s personal computers, which helped them establish a dominant market share.
He continued, “This is not the type of company, including Tesla, that you can expect who is the first mover in it to establish an unchallengeable monopoly.”
And he continued, “Tesla will not become like Microsoft even if things go as it should, and it will not be like Apple, where people use something because everyone uses it and it is difficult to dispense with it, and therefore there are high profits from it that will last for decades.”
In another context, Krugman commented on Elon Musk’s actions, saying: “It shows that he is not like Steve Jobs, Apple’s co-founder and former CEO, who was famous for his high level of discipline and focus on Apple products.” He added: “I don’t think that even if he Musk is as disciplined as Steve Jobs, Tesla will at any time be a sustainable profit-making machine the way Apple was, and this is not Musk’s fault but because the industry is not like that.
Musk criticized, saying, “But I don’t know anyone who has done so much damage to his great image in such a short time as Musk did.”
Musk completed a $44 billion acquisition of Twitter, then laid off more than half of its workforce, and other actions that sparked controversy.
Last year, Tesla shares witnessed a 65% decline, as the rise in interest rates affected all shares of technology companies, but some Tesla shareholders say that the actions of its CEO Elon Musk related to the company “Twitter” also led to the intensive selling of shares.
