Steve Jobs & Bill Gates Interview
Friends asked me recently what I thought of Apple exceeding Microsoft in market cap recently ($230B vs $224B):
In the five years I spent at Microsoft from 2004-2009 the stock essentially yo-yo’d between $20-30 despite increasing revenues (now at $58B, up from $44B in ‘06) so it’s difficult to say much is different. That said, Apple’s transformed enormously, now with revenues of $43B, up from $19B in ‘06.
What’s interesting to note, in my mind, is that growth of tech companies isn’t a zero sum game. Apple’s gone big into devices, online media sales, and building out a mobile applications platform while Microsoft’s been growing in enterprise software and OEM businesses primarily.
The pie gets bigger. It’s largely not win-lose across core businesses.
Hard to get across sometimes, perhaps below Jobs & Gates interview communicates the thought a little better:
