In a tech world that typically pits Apple against Microsoft or Google, analysts are giving bellwethers IBM and Hewlett-Packard cause to look over their shoulder. Some are predicting that Apple will overtake Big Blue and HP by 2013.
In an interview with Bloomberg, Forrester Research CEO George Colony predicted Apple’s revenues will exceed $ 200 billion in the next two years. “They’ll be bigger than IBM next year, and they’ll be bigger than HP the year after that,” Colony said.
Meanwhile, Thomson Reuters surveyed a group of analysts who are predicting Apple will post revenue of $ 99.4 billion in its current fiscal year and beat that the next year with revenue soaring to $ 117.77 billion. The iPad and the iPhone are driving the Apple juggernaut.
The ‘Steve’ Question Mark
Of course, at this point predicting that Apple is going to grow is like predicting the sun is going come up in the morning, said Rob Enderle, principal analyst at the Enderle Group. There are some potential roadblocks for Apple, though. One is the very CEO who has positioned the company for the success it’s experiencing.
“One risk is how Steve Jobs’ departure is going to affect the company. It’s really unlikely to have a short-term impact. They are trending up so rapidly that it’s going to be hard for Apple to miss the target,” Enderle said. “But Jobs’ departure is likely to have a big impact on valuation.”
Colony ceded the same point in his interview: “Remember, every two years they have to fill that store with new stuff … without Steve Jobs as the CEO, I think it will be much harder for them to do that.”
Will Tablets Fizzle?
Another potential risk is the tablet market. The netbook market, which Apple didn’t enter, turned out to be less explosive than expected — partially because of the…
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