Hindsight is a funny thing.
This week Apple became the most valuable company in human history with a market value of $623 billion. In 1997, however, Apple’s situation was a bit more precarious. After ousting founder Steve Jobs 12 years earlier, Apple experienced a period of long decline with a series of failed products and poor business strategy. Apple was on the verge of joining the junk heap of history with other failed competitors to the PC platform.
In 1997 Jobs returned to the helm and was able to turn the company around leading to an impressive comeback. During those dark days of the late 90′s, Dell was on top and Michael Dell gave the returning Jobs a bit of advice saying, ”What would I do? I’d shut [Apple] down and give the money back to the shareholders.”
And here we are, 15 years later, with Apple, the most valuable company in human history, worth 30 times more than Dell.
