When the US markets opened a few minutes ago, something rather interesting occurred. IBM ($203.9b) became more valuable than Microsoft ($202.7b). Of course, we had reported sometime back that Apple (now $305.1b) had overtaken Microsoft to become the most valuable tech company.
The relative performance of these three companies is even more stark if you look at the share price graph for the last five years. Microsoft has flat-lined, IBM has doubled but Apple is up >400%.
“The first one now will later be last?” Well, throughout most of my IT life IBM had been ‘first’ – only relinquishing this position to the ‘upstart’ Microsoft. Since then IBM has been reborn – moving from ‘Big Iron’ to ‘Big Software & Services’. It’s a remarkable transition. A few weeks ago I read an article which said that “In order to be re-born you first have to die”. The article cited IBM as an excellent example of a company which was very good at killing off bits of itself – like selling it PC operations to Lenovo. We can think of bits of many other companies currently in the doldrums that need ‘to die’ before they can be reborn.
But what of Apple? Will they suffer the Microsoft fate? Many suggest that their superb record of innovation will be tested without Steve Jobs. Let’s hope we won’t find out for some time to come.