The "battle of the tech giants" between Apple and Microsoft always signifies the shift in "tech dominance".

Last Thursday, Microsoft's stock price rose 1% at the opening, reaching a market value of $2.87 trillion, temporarily surpassing Apple to become the world's largest company by market capitalization.

However, as the market declined in the afternoon, the increase in Microsoft's stock price narrowed, and Apple regained the top position. At the close, Apple's market value was $2.89 trillion, leading Microsoft's $2.86 trillion.

Although Apple temporarily retained its position as the global market value leader in this stock price fluctuation, Microsoft's brief surpassing may signal the latest round of change in the global "tech king" in the era of generative artificial intelligence.

In the past two years, Microsoft has taken the lead in the field of generative artificial intelligence, not only investing in the hottest AI startup, OpenAI, but also fully integrating generative AI technology into its main products, driving the company's market value to rise all the way, approaching the $3 trillion mark.

In contrast, Apple has largely been excluded from this wave of artificial intelligence, and has not yet officially released its own large-scale model application, making it one of the few among global tech giants. At the same time, concerns about weak sales of Apple products have led Wall Street analysts to downgrade Apple's rating, further suppressing its stock price.

In fact, in the past forty years, whenever Apple and Microsoft have had a "tech king" dispute, it has marked a change in the "tech throne" in the history of technological development.

During the PC era, Microsoft dominated.

As the two giants in the global tech industry, the love-hate relationship between Microsoft and Apple can be traced back to the 1980s.

In 1984, Apple released the first personal computer with a graphical user interface - Macintosh. This product quickly captured the market with its disruptive design innovation and was recognized as the first commercially successful GUI computer.

The following year, Microsoft also launched its own computer with a graphical operating system, Windows 1.0, officially competing with Apple. Due to the striking similarity in appearance and feel of the two products, Apple's founder Steve Jobs angrily accused Bill Gates of plagiarism and filed a lawsuit against Microsoft.

However, the judge ultimately ruled that Apple had limited rights to the design, and this highly anticipated copyright lawsuit ended in Apple's failure.

Following this incident, Apple ousted Jobs, the soul of the company, in an internal power struggle, and subsequently began to decline. By the late 1990s, it was on the verge of bankruptcy, while Microsoft, with its "Wintel alliance" with Intel, embarked on the path of global dominance in the PC market.

By the year 2000, Microsoft's market value reached a peak of $600 billion, while Apple's market value was only $10 billion.

The Smartphone Era Belongs to Apple

It wasn't until 1997 when Steve Jobs returned to Apple and initiated sweeping reforms internally, while also repairing the relationship with Microsoft. In addition to selling $150 million worth of Apple stock to Microsoft, they signed a cross-licensing agreement, helping Apple regain its footing in the stock market.

In 1998, Apple launched the innovative iMac series of computers. With just this product, Apple "rose from the dead" and turned a $1 billion loss from the previous year into a $300 million profit.

Since then, Apple has been on a roll. In 2001, they introduced the i series of portable products, the iPod, and entered the vast consumer electronics market. In 2007, they released the groundbreaking Apple series of smartphones, becoming the world's largest consumer electronics company.

As the most important consumer electronics product in history, Apple opened the most glorious chapter in its history. In 2007, Apple's market value surpassed $100 billion for the first time, surpassing Microsoft in 2010, and surpassing ExxonMobil in 2011 to become the world's most valuable publicly traded company ($337.1 billion).

Meanwhile, Microsoft, at that time, struggled with a difficult transformation in the era of mobile internet. Not only did their traditional PC business show weak growth, but their new mobile phone business also failed to make a splash. The launch of Windows Phone and the acquisition of Nokia both ended in failure.

Microsoft's stock price plummeted, and by early 2014, its market value had shrunk to less than $300 billion, almost halving from its heyday.

In the era of cloud computing, Microsoft briefly returns to the throne

Since 2010, Apple has always been ahead in terms of market value, but there have been periods when it was briefly surpassed by Microsoft.

Under the leadership of current CEO Nadella, Microsoft's cloud computing business has flourished since 2018. During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2021, Apple's production was interrupted due to factory closures and supply issues, allowing Microsoft to briefly surpass Apple in market value with its leading advantage in cloud computing.

However, every time Microsoft surpasses Apple, Apple quickly regains the top spot. Last year, Apple once again made history by becoming the first company in the world to reach a market value of $3 trillion.

According to market data compiled by Dow Jones, since February 2019, either Apple or Microsoft has been the "king of the US stock market," forming an unbreakable duopoly.

In the era of artificial intelligence, Microsoft is sprinting while Apple is anxious

In the era of artificial intelligence, Microsoft took the lead by investing in OpenAI, the phenomenon-level AI model behind ChatGPT, and its market value is sprinting towards the $3 trillion mark. This has left Apple, which is lagging behind, in a state of "anxiety."

With weak global consumer electronics demand and sluggish sales, Apple urgently needs to find new sources of revenue.

To break free from this passive situation, Apple has launched a massive catch-up plan. Not only is it intensifying the development of its own large-scale language model (LLM), but it also plans to embed large models into Apple's smartphones, which opens up greater possibilities in the market.

In addition, Apple will launch the Vision Pro headset next month, which is touted as ushering in a new era of "spatial computing." Its features, such as digital avatars and scene and motion recognition, all rely on AI technology as support.

This product holds high hopes for Apple. In order to make it Apple's next flagship product, CEO Tim Cook even brought back Jony Ive, the soul of Apple's design, to be deeply involved in the design and planning process.

Can Vision Pro help Apple overtake its competitors? Guo Mingqi, an analyst at TF International Securities known as the most knowledgeable Apple analyst, predicts that Vision Pro is likely to be sold out quickly after it goes on sale. keyword=vision+pro). However, given Apple's pricing and the market's shipment expectations, it is difficult for Vision Pro to become Apple's next groundbreaking product.

However, it is worth noting that the era of generative artificial intelligence has just begun. As competition intensifies, Apple and Microsoft, the two giants of the technology industry, will undoubtedly continue to compete for the global stock market throne in this field, while constantly surpassing themselves in technological innovation.