Hacker News Reader

You picked one example (Apple) that supports your thesis (technology is cyclical).

It is, however, an exception to the rule.

Computer industry is littered with bodies of slain giants: Borland, Sybase, Lotus, Wordstar, Personal Software (VisiCalc) etc. The rest are companies that stabilized into a success (Oracle, eBay, Microsoft).

It's exceedingly rare to make a come back (IBM, Apple are 2 examples I can think of).

View on HN

Also, NeXT essentially acquired Apple. The current Apple barely resembles the early 90's / pre-Jobs company

Would we really consider IBM as a come back? From a B2B and patent revenues perspective I concede this could be a possibility, but from a B2C perspective, surely that ship has already sailed?

Remember that IBM Posted an 8 Billion Dollar loss in 1992. It was on the verge of being broken up. To go from there to a ~$212B Company with Revenues of $104B and Income before tax of $21B. --> I think IBM still counts as one of the biggest corporate turn-arounds in history.

IBM was never any good at B2C. Getting back to B2B played to it's strengths.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com