To celebrate IBM’s centenary next week, the world’s leading financial magazine, The Economist, took a look at what high-tech companies might survive 100 years.
Apple made the cut, but Microsoft didn’t. And Google is looking sketchy. Why?
Great companies need simple and powerful ideas to last a long time, says The Economist.
IBM for example, lasted 100 years by shifting from selling particular technologies and products to selling services. This allowed the company to survive huge technological shifts, from punch cards to mainframes and PCs.
In the same way, Apple is organized around a simple and long-lasting idea: take the latest high technology and package it up for consumers.
Like IBM, it had a near-death experience in the 1990s, and it is dangerously dependent on its founder, Steve Jobs. But it has a powerful organising idea: take the latest technology, package it in a simple, elegant form and sell it at a premium price. Apple has done this with personal computers, music players, smartphones and tablet computers, and is now moving into cloud-based services (see article). Each time it has grabbed an existing technology and produced an easier-to-use and prettier version than anyone else. This approach can be applied to whatever technology is flavour of the month: Apple has already shifted from PCs to mobile devices.
Microsoft on the other hand, has only one good idea: Windows. And Windows doesn’t look suitable for upcoming devices like tablets or cars. The Economist thinks Dell and Cisco are also doomed (long term).
Google is built on a good idea: organize the world’s information, but is too heavily dependent on search and Adsense.
Facebook and Amazon also look like good bets for the future, says The Economist: make is easy to buy stuff and make it easy to share stuff with friends. Both look like long-lasting ideas that transcend platforms or devices.
The Economist: The test of time: Which of today’s technology giants might still be standing tall a century after their founding?
What do you think? Will Apple be going strong in 2076?
Leander Kahney is the editor and publisher of Cult of Mac.
Leander is a longtime technology reporter and the author of six acclaimed books about Apple, including two New York Times bestsellers: Jony Ive: The Genius Behind Apple’s Greatest Products and Inside Steve’s Brain, a biography of Steve Jobs.
He’s also written a top-selling biography of Apple CEO Tim Cook and authored Cult of Mac and Cult of iPod, which both won prestigious design awards. Most recently, he was co-author of Cult of Mac, 2nd Edition.
Leander has been reporting about Apple and technology for nearly 30 years.
Before founding Cult of Mac as an independent publication, Leander was news editor at Wired.com, where he was responsible for the day-to-day running of the Wired.com website. He headed up a team of six section editors, a dozen reporters and a large pool of freelancers. Together the team produced a daily digest of stories about the impact of science and technology, and won several awards, including several Webby Awards, 2X Knight-Batten Awards for Innovation in Journalism and the 2010 MIN (Magazine Industry Newsletter) award for best blog, among others.
Before being promoted to news editor, Leander was Wired.com’s senior reporter, primarily covering Apple. During that time, Leander published a ton of scoops, including the first in-depth report about the development of the iPod. Leander attended almost every keynote speech and special product launch presented by Steve Jobs, including the historic launches of the iPhone and iPad. He also reported from almost every Macworld Expo in the late ’90s and early ‘2000s, including, sadly, the last shows in Boston, San Francisco and Tokyo. His reporting for Wired.com formed the basis of the first Cult of Mac book, and subsequently this website.
Before joining Wired, Leander was a senior reporter at the legendary MacWeek, the storied and long-running weekly that documented Apple and its community in the 1980s and ’90s.
Leander has written for Wired magazine (including the Issue 16.04 cover story about Steve Jobs’ leadership at Apple, entitled Evil/Genius), Scientific American, The Guardian, The Observer, The San Francisco Chronicle and many other publications.
Leander is an expert on:
Apple and Apple history
Steve Jobs, Jony Ive, Tim Cook and Apple leadership
Apple community
iPhone and iOS
iPad and iPadOS
Mac and macOS
Apple Watch and watchOS
Apple TV and tvOS
AirPods
Leander has a postgrad diploma in artificial intelligence from the University of Aberdeen, and a BSc (Hons) in experimental psychology from the University of Sussex.
He has a diploma in journalism from the UK’s National Council for the Training of Journalists.
Leander lives in San Francisco, California, and is married with four children. He’s an avid biker and has ridden in many long-distance bike events, including California’s legendary Death Ride.
You can find out more about Leander on LinkedIn and Facebook. You can follow him on X at @lkahney or Instagram.
62 responses to “Apple Will Last 100 Years, Says The Economist”
Ihone 93G FTW !
I presume this means it will be around until 2076, not that it will be around until 2111? If so, it sounds like it could be plausible. I know quite a few people who don’t really know who Steve Jobs is, as a lot of people who buy Apple products aren’t fanboys, so they will probably last without Steve. They’ll probably need a designer who can think like Jonathan Ive though.
Microsoft had two good ideas: Windows and Office.
How the hell are all the “cloud services” would work if Cisco is doomed? I mean how will the internet will work without Switches and Routers? c’mon!!
Microsoft has two good ideas and two bad implementations.
Show me an office suite better that MS Office.
There isn’t one.
And interestingly, “Microsoft’s” one good idea actually came from Apple, who admittedly stole it from Xerox.Â
iWork… Kind of. I prefer Keynote and Pages to Powerpoint and Word, but Numbers and Excel are tied, but Office includes more programs like Access. So it is kind of 50-50 on who is better.
Windows 7 was my idea! :)
Numbers is a nice spreadsheet application, but Excel for Windows is so much more. You can access databases, automate complex processes and create rich applications with it. The conditional formatting options alone are amazing, (not at all like in the Mac version). They say you can build flight simulator in Excel, and it is probably true.BTW, I use iWork at home and like it, but it is not better than office.
Apple Magic Mofo don’t need no switches and routers. That’s old skool shizzle. Cisco, my pisco is yesterday’s fish heads.
facebook is a pain in the ass ,
its already shrinking in the countries it was first started in.
 face privacy will be the next big thing  ( i -anonymous)
I think they planned to buy Xerox, but instead just bought some of the rights off them. If the Macs were just less expensive, Apple would definitely be the number one PC manufacturer, as they started it off, and most people I know like Macs more. They’re not even fanboys.
I agree. Microsoft has only one good idea besides Xbox. Majority of devices in the future will be tablets and phones. Everything is going in the cloud. Applications will be runned in the cloud and stored data there as well.
Making predictions that far out is a risky business.
When they are made by economists …. well, these are the people who did not see the global meltdown coming until it happened in 2008.
On that basis, AAPL has a few years left!
Some other howlers:
http://rinkworks.com/said/pred…
All economists don’t speak with one unified voice.
Plenty of economists did in fact see the global meltdown coming. In fact, Economist magazine repeatedly had articles about unsustainable housing prices, millions of mortgages that were going to blow up, and other related problems.
Apple stole nothing from Xerox. Â Apple paid Xerox stock.
Is that a binary 100 years or decimal? 8 )
like who’s Idea was Windows – a rip off of Mac OS. Â Excel was a iteration of Visicalc and Lotus 123.
what ever happens, CASIO will still be there, in your watch or school calculators by the year 2100.
Nice article.Â
Microsoft is good for a few things: Windows, Xbox, and Office. They’re trying to break into the smartphone and tablet market with Windows Phone, and Windows 8.Â
I don’t see it working that good though.Â
While I mostly agree with what the Economist article has to say I
find the idea that Facebook will be around in a hundred years’ time
laughable at best.
In truth Facebook may not even be around in five years’ time much
less a hundred. These Internet fads come and go faster than Steve
Ballmer has a brain fart. I predict the demise of Facebook in 2020
following MySpace down the plughole.http://http://www.technorotic.com/
You mean to say…Apple’s going to win. C’mon, let’s just take a step back and look at this here. Apple’s gunna do it, Apple’s gunna crush PC and finally win the mac vs pc kurfuffle. Phew. Now we can all sleep at night. Good article, gunna go pick up that magazine sometime. Cool.Â
I can see that by the way we see things going now, we can assume which companies will last and which won’t, but a lot can happen in a hundred years, shoot a lot can happen in 5 years. If you would of posted this 15 years ago, apple would of been the first on the list to get the boot.
While I mostly agree with what the Economist article has to say I
find the idea that Facebook will be around in a hundred years’ time
laughable at best.
In truth Facebook may not even be around in five years’ time much
less a hundred. These Internet fads come and go faster than Steve
Ballmer has a brain fart. I predict the demise of Facebook in 2020
following MySpace down the plughole.
Apple sells at a premium price? The best that other wannabe tablet makers can do is to match the iPad’s prices. As for laptops, the premium is way less than people think – Snow Leopard and Lion selling for $30 (and able to install on multiple computers). Lion Server for $50. The expense of Vista & 7 almost wipes out any cost savings on the hardware. And I haven’t even started on the quality of Apple’s hardware and software…
lol and this is the next generation of phones the iphone 100s! pop down to your local apple store which we now have 1000 of by the way and get it inserted in your brain!
I don’t think anything last that long these days. Apple is going on a great trajectory for the last decade and it has been a privilege to witness it before my eyes reading the news everyday from 2001 to now.
I wouldn’t be confident in believing this can go on indefinitely, let alone another couple of decades. So much can change in ways we’ve cannot imagine.
I think this article is full of BS. Facebook here 100 years from now? Please. Â Apple might be around but what is cool and hip today may not be tomorrow and technology could go into some very unexpected directions (cybernetic computers that project directly into your eyes) and Apple could miss the boat. Â
And I think the downplaying of the eventual loss of Jobs is laughable. Apple was a great company with Jobs, Jobs leaves, Apple starts to tank, Jobs comes back, Apple is great again. Hmm, I seem to see a pattern here. The thing about Jobs is his razor focus and commitment. And lets face it, his hyper egocentricity, snobbishness, and burtal disregard for his fellow employees. You see it in kings of the past. You have a great one and things are great. Loose the king and the kingdom crumbles into infighting.  Who is set to replace Jobs? No one.  That alone should put doubt into the next 10 years of Apple let alone 100. At my company we have a good idea who the next CEO will be and the last one is on the board.
And Microsoft not being on the 100 list is again laughable. They are the next IBM. Heck, they have moved into old Blue’s market with servers, database engines, etc. My work’s business runs on Windows and Microsoft is VERY responsive to business needs. Half the reason Windows 7 has any instability is because they leave it backwards compatible with all of those old business apps and hardware. PC computer hardware is cheap and we can swap out a machine with a newly loaded on in about an hour. PC equipment is made in all form factors and some embedded chips.  Is a Windows 7 PC as good as a Mac? No. But are 5000 PCs doing 500 completely different functions all over the world better and cheaper to run then 5000 Macs. 95% of business say yes every day. Will they in 100 years?  Who knows but we still have a mainframe in our server farm so 100 years from now we might have some MS VMs running as well.
This report just came off as just trying to be hip, give the thumbs up to all the current “cool” companies, and kicking the nerds at the play ground because they can get away with it. No information here what so ever.
“Stole” is figurative here, as is obvious from the context. They “stole” it because it wasn’t their original idea, same as Microsoft “stole” the idea from Apple. No criminal accusations being leveled here.
I am definitely quite late to this discussion, but I think that Apple could definitely last a century if they don’t end up crumbling under the loss of Steve Jobs. Unfortunately, from what I understand, Mr. Jobs had a huge influence on how things worked around Apple. Maybe his legacy will keep them going for a while longer, but they will have to find a solution to this eventually.
I also think that Microsoft could, if they pulled themselves together, turn the idea of “Windows” as a desktop OS into a platform on which to run any sort of technology, in the same way that Linux is being used transparently/silently/unknowingly all over the place. They would definitely have to rethink their vision of the product, however. They would also need to rework their priorities. I think they are very focused on keeping their hold on the enterprise operating system market, but I think they have to find a way to properly redistribute their efforts instead of making a bunch of half-baked stuff outside the Enterprise OS realm. If, and only if, they manage to do something along these lines might they be able to keep the company strong in the future.
No one can predict anything. I mean saying the worlds most valuable company with a headstrong momentum will be around awhile, not exactly going out on a ledge