December 30, 1999: Microsoft hits the peak of its Nineteen Nineties dominance and begins its early-2000s decline, clearing a niche on the high 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 usually give attention to Apple (and generally NeXT and Pixar) for “As we speak in Apple historical past,” it’s value singling out Microsoft right this moment 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 robust 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 might drive pc gross sales (nonetheless true right this moment, however to not the identical extent), the tide began to show following Apple co-founder Steve Jobs’ pressured departure from Cupertino. A really dangerous choice made by Apple helped gasoline Microsoft’s success.
Apple indicators a cope with the satan
Then-Apple CEO John Sculley signed a cope with Invoice Gates to present Microsoft “non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, nontransferable license to make use of [parts of the Mac technology] in current and future software program applications” 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-makers 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, Cupertino appeared so removed from a contender that Microsoft was prepared to bail out the corporate with a $150 million lifeline as a part of a deal involving Web Explorer. Apple was mentioned to be 90 days away from chapter at that time.
So what modified?
Inside weeks of Apple debuting its 1997 “Assume Totally 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. Nevertheless it did coincide with a leveling off of the corporate’s affect.
Not lengthy after the December 1999 inventory worth excessive (which was aided by the dot-com bubble), Gates stepped down as Microsoft CEO. Steve Ballmer took over the put up. Then, as Microsoft struggled to take care of its relevancy in a brand new century, Apple launched hit product after hit product. You realize the remainder.
Along with Apple, newer tech giants like Google helped fill the void as Microsoft’s dominance waned. In recent times, Microsoft’s push into cloud computing and its hiring of OpenAI CEO Sam Altman boosted the corporate’s inventory to new highs. Nonetheless, Microsoft doesn’t possess the form of world-dominating standing it did on the flip of the century.
How do you see issues enjoying out over the following few years? Go away your feedback beneath.
