Entry 465, on 2007-01-30 at 15:08:25 (Rating 2, Computers)
According to a news story I read today Apple might be bigger than Microsoft by the year 2010. The analysis was on a web site called 10Layers and it relied on current trends continuing. Those trends are: linear growth at Microsoft, and exponential growth at Apple.
Its all rather silly, of course. Not only can we not predict the future in an industry as fickle as computing, but we should never assume exponential growth of anything will continue for very long. On the other had it does show that Apple is doing the right thing, and this must be encouraging for us Mac fans.
Another question is: do we want Apple to be that successful? Large, dominant companies tend to become lazy because they don't have to innovate to do well. Microsoft is the all time greatest example of this. They wouldn't know an innovation from an abomination - look at Vista and you'll see what I mean!
Apple need to be successful financially and in terms of market share for two reasons: first, they need a reasonable number of Macs in use to encourage software writers to develop for the Mac; and second, they need a good enough profit to encourage the shareholders and to fund continued innovation.
Maybe Apple will reach a reasonable middle position on this, but I can't help but think that they shouldn't get much bigger than they are now, and that I don't ever want them to be bigger than Microsoft, even if it was practically possible.
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