Apple has been the world's most valuable public company since 2011, but their reign came to an end as of Friday, January 5th when Microsoft took the top spot. Microsoft's market value has skyrocketed in the past year due to their increasing participation in the world of artificial intelligence.
Apple dominated the technology sector with its iPhones and their products' connection to social media and the internet. Microsoft had not had a breakthrough development since Windows systems so cheif executive, Satya Nadella took a chance on A.I. and it proved to be the right choice. Generative artificial intellignece has very high potential economic value and could be a trillion dollar industry. While it causes controversy in the business world as to whether or not it wil disrupt jobs, Microsoft has taken generative A.I. and implemented it into their systems such as Excel and Outlook.
Microsoft has contninued to push forward in developments of artificial intelligence and the results are just starting to show. While they move upward, Apple seems to be slwoing down. The iPhone has become less of a craze and Apple has lost traction in application sales. According to the article Mac and iPad sales have declined and Wall Street analysts believe that Apple's iPhone sales will be less than ideal this year. While Apple has made steps towards entering the A.I. industry, like the new Vision Pro headset, they are still failing to make any major moves to catapult themselves back up to the top spot. While the Vision Pro headset will be a new product for Apple, Wall Street analysts again have low hopes for a huge spike in sales for Apple.
This was interesting to read abotu beacuse I actually analyzed the 10k form of Apple for my FIN 280 class. Like you mentioned in your summary, the Mac and IPad sales are showing the biggest declines in growth and are selling a lot less than Apple's other products. The biggest seller right now for Apple isn't even their a physical product but their services like Apple Care which have been growing significantly in the past three years. Taking that into consideration, it makes why Microsoft now has a competitive edge on Apple and has finally surpassed it. While it may not be a signifcant difference, it does allude to Apple's future and how they are no longer as popular as they once were during Steve Job's CEO era.
ReplyDeleteI also found that interesting-when looking at Apple's financial statements for FIN 280, it is clear that their products are no longer as popular and their services are bringing in the most profit right now. They have not released any revolutionary new products and appear to be falling behind as the technology industry moves forward with artificial intelligence. While on the other hand, Microsoft is expanding it's realm of expertise and engaging in the world of A.I. which will open up a multitude of new development and sales opportunities.
DeleteI was very surprised reading this that Apple were not on top anymore! One thing I think will be interesting to track over the coming months is the impact of the Apple Vision Pro. It seems like we are moving in the direction of VR and AR, and Apple seemed to have brought out a product that could help a lot of industries become more productive, or even students to help them study. This article was a very interesting read!
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