For a sign of the times, this chart is striking.
After more than a decade and a half, IBM looks like it is about to pass Microsoft once again in stock market value, something that would put it second only to Apple in terms of tech valuations.
Big Blue, the lumbering dinosaur of the tech world, back on top? Until recently, that would have felt like T-Rex winning out over the early humans.
But tech evolution went in a different direction. Speaking at IBM’s analyst day earlier this year, CEO Sam Palmisano allowed himself this brag:
I said the PC era was over. Well, nobody argues with that anymore, just look at the market and the economics associated with it. It’s completely commoditised.
Instead, he said, the future belongs to “big, fast, kick-butt system[s]” like Watson, IBM’s latest advance in question-and-answer computing.
And the iPad, of course. While IBM is hitting Microsoft from above, Apple is coming up from below. Microsoft’s shares dropped more than 4 per cent on Friday after its latest earnings showed an unexpected dip in Windows revenues, pushing its stock market value below $215bn. That is barely 2 per cent more than IBM, which has been gaining steadily.
Get ready for more headlines that look like they came from the early-1990s. Europe and the US are already investigating IBM again to see if it is unfairly maintaining its mainframe monopoly. Maybe white shirts and ties are about to make a comeback.
