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Tech wars

FEATURE: Google, Microsoft and Apple are the undisputed giants of consumer technology. But one can only dominate in future at the expense of the others. Who will it be?
November 25, 2010

Try as you might, it's difficult to pick up a paper or double-click an email without reading about or using Apple, Google or Microsoft. Even though they're US companies, they're as ubiquitous to us as the Beeb or bacon and eggs.

Shares in these three titans of technology are widely owned among UK investors. After all, our domestic market contains no companies with anything like their scale or market dominance. Even the smallest of them (currently Google) is worth almost five times as much as the entire UK software and computer services sector.

Their dominance has stemmed not so much from innovation, but from huge market power: Microsoft's operating system, Google's search algorithm and Apple's iTunes store. You could make a similar case for Intel's chip designs.

But such power won't sustain them forever. For a start, it has already attracted attention from regulators, especially in the case of Microsoft. And once you've conquered a market, where does your future growth come from?

Answer: from someone else's market. PC operating systems, internet search and trendy little music players are yesterday's story. Now, these three leviathans are all chasing similar markets - smartphone operating systems apps, cloud computing, and social media. Which of them will come out top dog - or does the future belong to up-and-coming technologies?