Since the spectacular turn around in Apple's fortunes investors are looking for the next big thing. "Xerox Corporation, one of the biggest brand names in the world, have got it right in their market and the rest of the industry are playing catch up" say OnlineConnect.co.uk. In many ways the companies share similar fortunes. Apple (founded by Steve Jobs, Stephen Wozniak, Ronald Wayne) produced the first successful personal computer with a graphical operating system. Xerox (founded by Chester Carlson, Joseph C Wilson) were the inventors of Xerography (later called the photocopier).

Both Companies however seemed to lose their way in the eighties. In 1983 Apple recruited John Sculley, the marketing genius behind Pepsi Cola, to work as CEO alongside Steve Jobs. It should have been the dream team, but as Apple announced the arrival of the Mackintosh, with a Ridley Scott commercial entitled 1984, an internal power struggle was happening behind the scenes which eventually saw Jobs forced out of the company he was one of the founders of.

In the 70's Xerox's core product was facing stiff competition so they started branching out, investing heavily in the computer industry. Building a team of innovative programmers and inventors they developed graphical operating systems, the computer mouse and what could have been the first personal computer (except Xerox failed to realise the commercial value and didn't market it). Xerox foresaw the transition of the document and its development from paper to electronic format. However, while they were investing in the future of documents, they had failed to protect their core business and by the mid eighties Xerox were in rapid decline, with other manufacturers catching up with their technology in the photocopier market.

In 1979 Xerox threw open their doors to the press and the public, showcasing their unique products, among those attending were Steve Jobs and Bill Gates."They just had no idea what they had" Jobs was later quoted as saying. Xerox had internally connected individual sites together using what they referred to as 'Inter Network Routing' later abbreviated to 'Internet'.

John Scully carried huge weight with Apple's board, having been behind the Cola wars marketing battle that had seen Pepsi catch up with the world's biggest brand name, Coca Cola. Some of Apple's marketing alienated customers, such as the infamous Mackintosh Lemmings advert. The Apple Mac, created by Jeff Raskin and Steve Jobs (before he left), became a success, after a rocky start, and the market leader in desktop publishing and the media industry. Meanwhile the Apple Lisa , which Steve Jobs was removed from the development of, sank without trace.

By the mid eighties Xerox and Apple had opposite strengths and weaknesses. While John Scully at Apple was a proven marketing guru, Apple by the end of 1985 had lost both co-founders Stephen Wozniak and Steve Jobs. Xerox meanwhile had one of the best development teams in the world at that time in the computer industry. They foresaw the rise of digital documents and communication through the internet and were speculating about a digital market where people advertised on search. However, while Xerox had the ideas they lacked the marketing expertise and suffered in trying to make the transition from Xerox Machines to IT in the eyes of the business user.

Ultimately both Apple and Xerox hit a brick wall in the eighties when they tried to tackle the business market leader IBM. While many thought the battle for the business user would be about hardware, one small software company were concentrating on the operating system. Bill Gates Microsoft had none of the overheads of the manufacturers and was licensing its own version of UNIX and later DOS to computer vendors. In 1981 Microsoft won a contract to provide IBM with an operating system for the IBM Personal Computer. As IBM PC clones came to the market Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer successfully marketed MS-DOS to other manufacturers. In 1985 Microsoft released a graphical version of its MS-DOS operating system called Microsoft Windows for retail. The product was a massive success and became the most widely used operating system in the world. Microsoft went on to become the dominant operating system in business, networking and PC with successive versions of Windows and Microsoft Office. Free from the expensive costs of manufacturing, Bill Gates
Jennifer Robinson writes for Online Connect, specialist suppliers of document management solutions and photocopier machines, including xerox photocopiers.

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