This week saw a notable shift in the balance of power in the technology world. Apple (according to the somewhat dubious valuations accorded by the global stock markets) is now worth more as a company than Microsoft.
The two companies, who began at a similar time in the 1970s, have seen incredibly opposite trajectories since they first emerged from the hobbyist microcomputer market. In the mid-1990s, in the days before the Internet (www) explosion, it could be argued that it was only the direct investment by Microsoft in its ailing (and Steve Jobs-free) competitor that kept Apple in business.
Today the tables have turned. Microsoft appears to be a fading star (one of those ones that expands massively before turning into a black hole). Unless something dramatically turns around for them, it seems the Web 2.0 world will leave them staring at lost license revenue.
Apple, on the other hand, are in the ascendant. In a week when their next great hope, the iPad, launched outside the US, their reinvention as the arch consumer media products marketing engine seems complete.
Which leaves me wondering… How serious are they about manufacturing computers these days? Apple seem to be a marketing company, specialising in media content and distribution channels, with a legacy personal computer company tacked on the side.
As with many organisations in the Creative sector, the most important business computers in Imagination are high-spec, high-cost Mac workstations. If you put the history aside for a moment, this increasingly feels like a retail company buying its EPOS systems from News International or Disney.
Actually, given the Pixar connection, maybe I am buying our core business systems from Disney. Cue 'Mickey Mouse Organisation' jokes…
mmitII 