In the quiet of the post-Christmas vacation break Kent Alder officially retired as CEO of TTM.

Over the years, I’ve written about what I call the Apple Effect, or what will be the inevitable mass copying of Apple by the OEMs it has left in its financial wake. When your competitor’s margins are typically in the 40% range, give or take a couple points, and yours are, well, below 0%, it does make sense to study what they are doing right and emulate where you can.