從IBM到蘋果 一張圖看懂科技巨頭盛衰史

INTERNATIONAL Business Machines (IBM) must rank as a case study in corporate survival. Founded in 1911 as a manufacturer of punch-card machines, more than a century later it remains one of the largest technology companies in the world.
國際商業機器公司（IBM）無疑被人們視爲公司生存的典範。它創立於1911年，當時是一家穿孔卡片機制造商。一個多世紀後，它仍然是世界最大的科技公司之一。

Where once it made mechanical behemoths for reading and manipulating paper cards, today it focuses on providing computing services and software to clients across the world.
過去，IBM生產讀取和處理紙質卡片的巨型計算機；現在，它致力於爲遍及全球的客戶們提供計算服務和軟件。

But the days of Big Blue’s dominance are long past. It was recently surpassed in market value by Facebook, a company barely a decade old. As the market has grown, technology companies have proliferated.
但藍色巨人的統治期早已過去。最近，IBM的市值被剛滿10週歲的Facebook超過。

Though today’s tech giants are larger than ever, even Apple, now the largest publicly traded company in America, accounts for less than a quarter of the market.
儘管今日的科技巨頭們比以往任何時候都要龐大，但就算是美國最大的上市公司蘋果，也沒能超過前100強市值總額的四分之一。

Many companies that supplanted IBM during the 1980s and 1990s, such as Hewlett-Packard and Microsoft, now find themselves in eclipse. All three are trying to make a comeback by pushing into cloud computing, meaning that data are stored and crunched on remote servers.上世紀八九十年代中，惠普、微軟等許多公司超過IBM，但它們如今都已光輝不再。這三家公司都努力試圖通過雲計算捲土重來。這一技術意味數據會在遠程服務器上存儲和處理。