Apple vs. Microsoft – The final frontier
Finally, there’s no more listening to this sentence anymore: “Well, I’m using Microsoft Windows. You know, that’s the better OS. If it weren’t, why is Microsoft the bigger player?”
My friends, the tables have turned. According to Yahoo Finance Apple has a net worth of 230Bwhereas Microsoft caps at 212B (08/13/2013).
There’s much joy to extract from this graph from WolframAlpha (note: WA uses data from 06/30/2010. The breakthrough was imminent back then):
Now, please don’t come bothering me, because Microsoft still has Windows and Office to receive the big routine paycheck while Apple has to constantly innovate to keep its pace. Depending on those two has thought Microsoft nothing but stagnation. In the meantime Apple, Google, Facebook and Twitter arose. If Microsoft doesn’t change pace, they will suffer Yahoos’ fate.
If you ask me, it would be for the best of it. In the field of technology not the biggest player will win in the long run, but the most innovative. Do you remember those Kodak cameras that didn’t go digital (1990:7B, 2010:0$, source)? Geocities was hip once and worth 3.6B in 1999, now dead (source).
The list continues. Even when there is market domination, there still is room to manoeuvre. Microsoft didn’t equip the first personal computers – and they certainly won’t be the last.