A decade ago, when crude oil was over 100 dollars per barrel, oil companies dominated every list of the world’s top companies. Ever heard of PetroChina? Well, the China based oil giant used to be the world’s largest company with a market value of $728 billion and becoming the first company worldwide to cross the 1 trillion-dollar mark in market value.
Fortunately, tables have turned in favour of another sector,
Technology! Also a decade ago, just a single tech company,
Microsoft, was listed among the ten biggest companies in the world and years after
years after, half of the top ten are tech giants. This doesn’t imply stagnancy
or a decline in other sectors, but establishes the fact that tech firms are
growing faster.
Describing
the tech industry’s history, the 90’s was the era of the Personal Computer;
then comes the internet and related services, rapidly followed by mobile
technology; and we are in the age of artificial intelligence. Unsurprisingly enough, the technology sector is the
key catalyst for change in the world, with technology companies not only
dominating our daily lives which is obvious in the number of times you've checked your phone today but
also the ranking of the world’s biggest companies.
The world is changing at an increasingly remarkable pace and nothing
describes this better than observing globally, rankings of the largest companies. Businesses today have learnt to move
fast in a bid for survival despite always wanting to be ahead of competitors
but unfortunately for others and luckily for tech companies, they are much
quicker than those in other industries in gaining market share, controlling
costs, and making decisions due to their insistence on empowering their staff
to be continuously creative and innovative.
Undoubtedly, no recent graduate longs to work anywhere else
anymore asides the T-shirt, sneaker wearing, fast moving internet giants like Amazon,
SoftIngines, Google and Facebook. These technology giants are currently
dominating the world and labour market by heavily investing in the development of
new products and services leading to an explosion in innovation and faster
growth.
One
common trend in the tech market is ‘prominence’, as each individual company
tries to forge their own path unlike in the past where transnationals competed
alongside one another at the top of the global market. Whereas, in today’s
business world there is no second place which means coming second is not an
option. And these large technology companies
which benefit from globalisation, are always penetrating new markets to first
lay their dominance.
In the tech world, there’s no space for competition as any
promising small company that could compete is quickly acquired by its larger
rival. For example, Facebook acquired upcoming threats WhatsApp and Instagram,
while Google has made more than 120 acquisitions in the last 10 years.
What’s
more, the tech market has billions of consumers eagerly awaiting the next big
thing from these companies which means they only need to worry about user
satisfaction and not customer acquisition. All the tech world requires is
creativity and you don’t need to wait a century to build a top five company,
which was what it took a decade ago. You can do it in your lifetime.
On
average, these top five companies collectively are just 33 years old with them
all being established and managed by entrepreneurs, even if they are large
public companies and, in most cases, a considerable portion of their voting
shares are held by their founders.
Bearing
all these in mind, it’s therefore not surprising that Apple has become the
first American company and the first tech company and also the first company
after PetroChina to hit the 1 trillion-dollar margin. This is positive news for
all of us in the tech industry and we hope to better improve the world as we
try to better technology.
Watch
out for our next post where we give you insight on how to invest in tech
companies, which companies to invest in and which tech companies to follow so
you don’t miss out on this moving train.
Bye!
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