Who is Tomorrow?

When Apple's market capitalization overtook Microsoft last week, became the largest IT company on earth, the IT world is entering to the Apple era.

Apple was a near bankrupt company a decade ago, with share price as low as USD6 at the time Steve Jobs returned to Apple, compare to average of USD250 now.

Steve managed to get Bill Gates, his rival for many, to inject fresh fund on Apple. With products such as iMac, iPod, iPhone, and the recent iPad, Apple sweeps everyone in the tech world, Nokia, Google and Microsoft included, to be the No 1.

Coincidently, it was Apple and IBM brought Microsoft up to its size and influence today. Microsoft made the CPM/80 card, bundled with MBASIC for Apple II. Excel and Word were developed for the Macs back in 1980's before Windows firm its dominant position with Windows 3.0.

IBM on the other hand spurred the growth of PC by opening up the PC hardware design, allowing others like Compaq (now HP) to use the design and compete with IBM.

Microsoft benefited most from IBM and IBM's openness on PC hardware, and eventually took over IBM as the largest IT company with its PC/MSDOS and Windows.

Thus, it was IBM, the largest IT company of yesteryear, brought Microsoft up.

It was Microsoft, the largest IT company of yesterday, brought Apple back on track with its financial and products (Word and Excel for Mac) support on Macs.

Who will Apple groom to eventually replace its dominant position?

Anyone?