Saw this on a site this morning...amazing!
"When Steve Jobs assumed the CEO position at Apple on July 9, 1997 Apple shares cost $3.42 and the company had a market cap of around $3 billion. This week Apple shares hit $266 with a market cap of $241 billion — 80 times larger than it was 13 years ago. Microsoft shares, in contrast, went from $17.67 to $31 in the same time frame — not even a doubling despite more than $80 billion in share buy-backs by the company.
So what’s going on here, really? Having known both Steve Jobs andBill Gates for more than 30 years, it comes down to market transitions and the fact that, as Gates explained to me many years ago, “the way to make money in this business is by setting de facto standards.” And while Windows and Microsoft Office remain the biggest de facto standards of all, Microsoft hasn’t created any new such standards in over a decade while Apple has the iPod, iPhone, a resurgent line ofMacintosh computers, a huge retail operation, and dominant market share in music sales."
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