How the PC world is changing. First we hear that a Chinese upstart named Lenovo has taken over IBM's PC business to create the world's 3rd largest PC maker, then we hear that while Dell is struggling with performance, HP is turning their PC business around. Now we have Intel based Apple Mac's available for purchase and to cap it all, Apple is now worth more than Dell!
For a 12% surge in Apple's stock price last week pushed the company's market capitalization to $72.13 billion, passing Dell's value of $71.97 billion. Wow!
Now, Dell is probably a little undervalued at the moment, but the milestone has to beg a few questions. One is, can Apple become the next trend leader in consumer PC's, leaving Dell to focus back on the corporate market? Another question is whether the PC as a device is starting to morph into more of a consumer electronics offering and so the Apple's of this world are likely to be mid term winners.
And perhaps the short term reason for Apples success is that in every mature market, and the PC is now a mature product, value accures to the manufacturer with the largest margins and he who owns the top end of the market. Just look at Porsche in the car market. Apple certaily looks like they can be the quality leader and their proprietary solutions could just prove to be their key to longer term success.
Oh, and lastly, might Apple just surprise us all and take a larger slice of the PC market than anyone expects? Now that's the real million dollar question. We'll know more at the end 2006.
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