There was considerable discussion last night, continuing through this morning, about Apple supplanting Microsoft as the technology company with the largest market capitalization.
The discussion is warranted. When a changing of the guard occurs at the top of the heap — even if it’s a heap built on ever-shifting market valuation — people will notice and try to invest great meaning in the event.
At a basic and literal level, of course, it means that the market ascribes greater value to Apple than to Microsoft. In terms of mindshare and brand, Apple has been outgunning Microsoft for some time, and the market now believes that, based on where the two companies stand today, Apple is a more valuable company that Microsoft.
What you need to remember about markets, however, is that they’re dynamic. Every day, they rise and fall, twist and turn. They never stop. They aren’t like the World Cup, for example, where a tournament is played, teams are gradually eliminated and one eventually claims the title, all its own until the next World Cup in four years.
On the market, nothing is ever fully settled. There’s no time to celebrate a milestone, because any milestone achieved is arbitrary and fleeting.
So, while I think it’s interesting that Apple has surpassed Microsoft in market capitalization — and while I agree that it says much about both realities and perceptions of both companies in the recent past and in the here and now — I also realize that the market is not finished taking its snapshots and making its sometimes capricious determinations.
Today is another day, and tomorrow will be another. Considering all the ferment and volatility we’ve witnessed in the technology sphere during the last couple months, one arguably could make the case that neither Apple nor Microsoft will necessarily accrue more relative strength during the next several years.
Obviously, Microsoft’s past-performance chart, as well as its current struggles, looks worse. It’s by no means certain that Microsoft can remake itself as its core franchises — Windows and Office — are threatened by a broad-based transition to cloud computing.
Similarly, though, the snapshot the market took yesterday might have captured Apple at its peak. Apple is under attack for its App Store policies and practices, and its ascendant iPhone is likely to meet stiffer competition in the smartphone market from Google Android-based handsets, RIM’s BlackBerry (still a force in enterprise accounts, despite what you might have heard), HP’s Palm, Nokia (though that’s less certain), and even Microsoft, which is in the process of reanimating its moribund mobile business yet again.
Let’s not forget, too, about the Chinese handset players, who are likely to be major forces in their home markets and might not be content to play the comparatively passive role of software licensees.
Clearly news of Apple usurping Microsoft as market-capitalization king was deserving of notice and commentary. We need to remember, though, that it’s only a snapshot in time, and that markets — the public markets in which stocks are traded and those in which products and services are bought and sold — never sleep.
Twilight in the Valley of the Nerds 