Bill Miller, the chief investment officer at Legg Mason Capital Management and a major Amazon shareholder, asked Bezos at the time about the profitability prospects for AWS. Bezos predicted they would be good over the long term but said that he didn't want to repeat "Steve Jobs's mistake" of pricing the iPhone in a way that was so fantastically profitable that the smartphone market became a magnet for competition.
In the book "The Everything Store," author Brad Stone recounts a conversation between Bill Miller, the chief investment officer at Legg Mason Capital Management and a notable Amazon investor, and Jeff Bezos regarding the future profitability of Amazon Web Services (AWS). Bezos expressed confidence in AWS's long-term profitability but was cautious about his pricing strategy.
He reflected on the lessons learned from Steve Jobs's approach to the iPhone, cautioning against setting prices too high that would attract overwhelming competition. This highlights Bezos's strategic mindset in navigating the nascent cloud computing market while maintaining a sustainable competitive edge.
