December 30, 1999: Microsoft hits the peak of its Nineteen Nineties dominance and begins its early-2000s decline, clearing a spot on the prime for Apple.
After hitting an all-time excessive of $53.60, Microsoft inventory begins to fall. Lower than a yr later, MSFT shares will fall greater than 60% in worth to $20.
A decade of Microsoft dominance
Whereas I sometimes give attention to Apple (and generally NeXT and Pixar) for “In the present day in Apple historical past,” it’s price singling out Microsoft right now due to what this date signified concerning the altering face of tech. In inflation-adjusted {dollars}, Microsoft’s market cap reached a excessive of round $850 billion on the time.
It’s powerful to consider an organization that appeared extra unassailable than Microsoft as 2000 approached. And but, simply 15 years earlier, Microsoft had been little greater than a profitable indie developer for the Mac.
At a time when software program may drive pc gross sales (nonetheless true right now, however to not the identical extent), the tide began to show following Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’ pressured departure from Cupertino in 1985. A really unhealthy choice made by Apple helped gasoline Microsoft’s success within the ’80s and ’90s.
Apple indicators a cope with the satan
In November 1985, Apple CEO John Sculley signed a cope with Invoice Gates to provide Microsoft “non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, nontransferable license to make use of [parts of the Mac technology] in current and future software program packages” for its fledgling Home windows working system.
Apple’s willpower to stay with a proprietary OS whereas Microsoft licensed Home windows to third-party PC producers arrange a tough few years for Cupertino. After disastrous product launches and poor administration choices, Apple fell from energy. In the meantime, Microsoft progressively crept nearer to matching what Apple was doing with Mac OS — most notably with Home windows 95.
By the point of Jobs’ return to Apple in 1997 with the corporate’s acquisition of NeXT, Cupertino appeared so removed from a contender that Microsoft was keen to bail out the corporate with a $150 million lifeline as a part of a deal involving Web Explorer. Apple was stated to be 90 days away from chapter at that time.
So what modified?
Inside weeks of Apple debuting its 1997 “Assume Completely different” advert marketing campaign, marking Jobs’ imaginative and prescient for what Apple wanted to signify, the Justice Division sued Microsoft in what grew to become a long-running antitrust case. This wasn’t sufficient to topple Microsoft by any means. However it did coincide with a leveling off of the corporate’s affect.
Not lengthy after the December 1999 inventory value excessive (which was aided by the dot-com bubble), Gates stepped down as Microsoft CEO. Steve Ballmer took over the submit. Then, as Microsoft struggled to keep up its relevancy in a brand new century, Apple launched hit product after hit product. You already know the remaining.
Along with Apple, newer tech giants like Google helped fill the void as Microsoft’s dominance waned. Lately, Microsoft’s push into cloud computing and its hiring of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman boosted the corporate’s inventory to new highs. It presently sits at No. 3 on the record of the world’s most respected publicly traded corporations (following Apple and Invidia). Nevertheless, Microsoft doesn’t possess the type of world-dominating standing it did on the flip of the century.
How do you see issues taking part in out over the subsequent few years? Go away your feedback under.