A few months ago, USA Today speculated that Apple would become the first $1 trillion company. Earlier this week, Apple made great strides toward this milestone when it surged ahead of ExxonMobile Corp to capture the title of world’s most valuable company.
Whether Apple lives up to this prediction or not, it has already achieved what seemed impossible. The company saw a 300% increase in stock price in less than three years, in a very difficult economic climate. Today, Apple exceeds Microsoft in market capitalization ($213 Billion for MSFT vs $302 B for AAPL) although, just 14 years ago, Microsoft had to inject $150M into its bank account to keep from going out of business.
These facts are extremely unlikely and unpredictable, but don’t come as a surprise to anyone who has observed the last few decades with objectivity and, amongst other trends, paid attention to principles such as The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable.
The most remarkable observation of all, in my opinion, is that Apple achieved this overwhelming success using the exact same strategy as the one used the 80′s with the Macintosh. The company continues to design technologies that best interface with humans and thus empower them in their ability to learn fast and feel gratified by increased accomplishments and productivity. This is the essence of addictive technologies and products; concept that Apple has mastered. The first buyer is already standing in line for the iPhone 5 – a product that has yet to even be announced.
In other words, Apple remained firm on its course to cater to fundamental human needs and instincts: It’s the world that has evolved around it.
Tags: Apple, iPhone, Microsoft, prediction
Great post Vahe,
I totally agree that most of Apple success is due to their great care of industrial design and user interface. Proof of this can be found in the company’s history (This book is a must
http://www.amazon.com/Appledesign-Apple-Industrial-Design-Group/dp/1888001259)
By contrast, RIM phones suck and their dismal was entirely predictable.
Excellent observation indeed.
Your point on technology as opposed to software is important – Apple’s attention to User Experience combines near-obsessive attention to integrated experiences from process to software to hardware.
What is interesting to observe is also how this has scaled: Apple is not a small company by any measure, and yet they have kept a culture of User focus that usually simply does not scale well (of course, even at Apple there are many counter-examples). Many companies became victims of their own successes and were unable to grow in such a context.