Biggest Company In The World

In 1997 Michael Dell proved that no one was so far down that he couldn’t still kick them, when he said that a competitor seemingly on its last legs should just shut down and ‘give the money back to the shareholders.’

From the excellent investment site Bespoke comes a chart showing just how close Apple is now to being the biggest company by market capitalization in the world.

To me this is the most interesting thing of all:

Imagine the question mark that would have popped up in your head had someone said 10 years ago that Apple would be the biggest company in the world but still have less than 10% of the PC market? There isn’t a “pc” in “biggest,” but there surely is an “i”.

This is really a story about the differentiation of ‘computer’ into many different devices, each more appropriate to their function than the Model T- I mean the computer! – was in the 1990s. It was a wonder of versatility then, but the inefficiencies had to go.

Since ‘computers’ are being/will be outmoded by smartphones and pads and jesus boxes that jack into ubiquitous screens, and god knows what else is coming (from myriad companies, not just Apple), Apple may never get to 10% of the computer market. Who would’ve thought it might not matter?

So back to the analysts’ harping on market share. That’s the problem with ‘metrics’: they measure what is known, more or less, and imply that the importance of what you don’t see coming is diminished by being unmeasurable.