Apple Passes Microsoft to Become the World’s Biggest Tech Company

Apple fan-boys and -girls, rejoice. The iCorporation is now worth more than the dreaded Microsoft. But don’t get too excited: Bill Gates’ gang has a few ideas to get back in the game, and some bloggers claim that Google, whose Android is outselling the iPhone, “has leapfrogged” Apple in terms of innovation.

(Steve Jobs responds to that accusation with “not a chance.”)

It’s real-life tech wars, only without all the William Shatner.

Look for Microsoft to push back this summer with the release of Office 2010 and this fall with the reboot of the mobile operating system formerly known as Windows Mobile. Other ups for Microsoft: Xbox is getting “Project Natal” soon and Windows 7 is the fastest-selling Windows ever. Now for the bad news: Redmond just lost two of its brightest stars and a former employee says there’s organizational chaos.

Whatever threats Google and Microsoft pose, Apple is now the king of the hill. It’s a fable worthy of David and Goliath, with a little Lazarus thrown in. — PZS

New York Times:

This changing of the guard caps one of the most stunning turnarounds in business history for Apple, which had been given up for dead only a decade earlier, and its co-founder and visionary chief executive, Steven P. Jobs. The rapidly rising value attached to Apple by investors also heralds an important cultural shift: Consumer tastes have overtaken the needs of business as the leading force shaping technology.

Microsoft, with its Windows and Office software franchises, has dominated the relationship most people had with their computers for almost two decades and that was reflected in its stock market capitalization. But the click-clack of the keyboard has ceded ground to the swoosh of a finger across a smartphone’s touch screen.

Read more