There
are many companies which were at the top once, but couldn’t hold the
position for too long and were toppled by much smaller and nimbler
companies which had better products and innovations to change the
business sector. 24/7 Wall St. has listed out some of those companies
who recently toppled from their position.
Google vs. Yahoo
Google is the synonym for internet, searching products, or downloading
software. Google rules as the biggest search engine. But it’s hard to
believe that this was not the scene earlier. In the early days, Lycos,
Excite, AskJeeves were the rulers of the search world. By 20th
century end, Yahoo became the leader by dragging the smaller companies
under it at any cost. In 2000, Yahoo had 56 percent of the search engine
referrals, which was six times its closest competitor.
Google had only 1 percent of the market in June 2000. Soon Yahoo
started using Google’s search algorithm. Yahoo began to lose steam
quickly as Google began competing for market share. Within 2002,
Google’s efficient search engine became much popular. It referred 31.8
percent of all searches, compared to Yahoo, which is only 36.3 percent.
Google’s popularity increased exponentially in the next eight years and
reached at the top most position. According to Comscore, in July 2011,
Google had more than 65 percent of the market share while Yahoo had just
16.1 percent.
Hewlett-Packard vs. Dell
Dell was once the market King for global PC sales, with 13 percent of
the market share. Compaq was second with 11.2 percent share. Over the
past decade, the graph of personal computer market has changed
drastically. In May 2002, Hewlett-Packard acquired the fraught Compaq
for $25 billion.
Dell was the leader with a 17.2 percent of market share till 2005, but
HP quickly closed the gap with 14.7 percent share. Within third quarter
of 2008 that is within less than three years, HP surpassed Dell, and
leads the market till now. In Q2 of 2011, HP’s market share was 17.5
percent, Dell’s was 12.5 percent, and Lenovo’s was 12 percent which is
just behind Dell.
Apple vs. Nokia
In Q4 of 2007, Nokia had more than 50 percent of the worldwide
smartphone market share, whereas Research In Motion’s Blackberry had
10.9 percent and Apple at just 5.2 percent. Though Apple had less
smartphone market share it was leading the digital music device market
consistently.
In the fourth quarter of 2010, Apple iPhone still had a relatively
small portion of the market with a 16.1 percent share which is a little
over half of that of Nokia’s 28 percent. With a huge sale number and
Steve Jobs driving the company, Apple shared 19.1 percent market share
within second quarter of 2011, with an annual growth of 141 percent.
Nokia came down to the third position after Samsung which had a 15.7
percent of the market share.
Facebook vs. Myspace
Rupert Murdoch’s News Corporation purchased upcoming Myspace for $580
million in July 2005, when Facebook membership was still limited to
college students. According to Comscore, in May 2007, Facebook’s unique
monthly viewers were restricted to just 30 million, whereas Myspace’s
were at around 70 million.
In May 2009, Facebook toppled Myspace’s unique viewers, which had still
70 million viewers. Later Facebook had nearly 160 million users.
Meanwhile Myspace’s users dropped below 40 million and that number kept
on falling. In June 2009, Murdoch sold the dying company Myspace for $35
million which is 93 percent less than the original purchase price.
GM vs. Toyota
General Motors aka GM has actually experienced two major hurdles in the
race to become the top automaker in the world. GM had been the dominant
leader in U.S., since 1930s, and was dominant in the global market as
well, for almost of the latter half of the 20th century. But it started
to lose its grip from the top most position, because of the global
recession. Toyota officially became the world’s topmost automaker by the
end of 2008, beating out GM. GM’s global market share continued to
decline globally as well as in U.S.
Due to limited sales and financial troubles from the recession, the
manufacturer (GM) filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in June 2009. Within
two years it regained its top position. GM made profit very quickly as
its new IPO was successful. With Japan earthquake hitting its rival
Toyota hard, GM again became the world’s largest automaker in August
2009. In the first half of 2011, GM sold 4.5 million units whereas Its
Japanese rival, Toyota sold only 3.7 million.
Amazon vs. Barnes & Noble
Barnes & Noble was the largest bookseller for years. However,
online retailer Amazon.com has blown the company away by taking book
selling online. Amazon.com became less burdened due to no expensive
business running stores. The convenience and ease of operations became
an additional benefit for Amazon.
Its e-book reader Kindle surpassed the e-reader race with B&N’s
Nook and others. Barnes & Noble’s net income dropped from $147
million in 2006 to a loss of $74 million in 2010. Amazon, meanwhile saw a
net profit from $190 million to $1.2 billion.
Blockbuster vs. Netflix
Blockbuster is a VHS rental company founded in 1985. Blockbuster, with
more than 6,500 stores around the country, went public in 1999, the same
year when Netflix launched. By 2006, Netflix came into the picture by
making just $1 billion profit that year, which was not so close to the
figure of Blockbuster’s revenue, which was roughly $5.5 billion.
But the small company introduced streaming video in 2007, which allowed
the viewers to watch films on home computers. This unique feature,
along with the growing popularity of the company’s DVD delivery service
became an additional benefit to Netflix and it led to a steady downfall
of Blockbuster’s profitability. By 2010, the massive company
Blockbusters lost it millions of customers each quarter. Finally it
declared bankruptcy by the middle of the year. By then, Netflix had more
than 25 million subscribers.