Profit is a lagging indicator that often leads companies astray with short-term decision making at the expense of long-term relevance.

Look at Apple before the return of Jobs (though at that point, they were having profit issues too - but what lead to that was arguably short-term thinking).

Today, I'd argue Intel has made similar decisions that put them on a bad long term path.

MS would have stayed alive for a while, but been a shadow of their former self.

Obviously, it's hard to prove a counterfactual like this - but this is how I model it.

Enterprises are the slowest to change of all and this is MS bread and butter. I completely disagree MS was ever close to becoming irrelevant. Silicon valley is in it's own little world. The rest of the planet is firmly a MS customer.

MS can take all the good ideas, implement them and sell them worldwide before a startup can get out of silicon valley. Case in point: slack vs. teams.

Arguably that focus on O365 and Azure - the strategy that enabled Teams success was due to Nadella.

You're right though - 'irrelevant' is too provocative and strongly worded.

I'm more focused on future bets and trends. I think that trend shifted at Microsoft from trending towards future irrelevance back in the other direction, to being a competitive threat again.

Agreed.

I find it interesting that Apple has money, hardware, OS, many apps, web presence. And now ARM CPU knowhow.

Why aren't they forcibly pushing into Corporate?

Sure, they'd have to develop corporate fleet management stuff but at this stage they could buy a few companies and be 80% of the way there. Or build it right from the start for only a handful of their hundreds of billions.

How many iphone toting CTOs in your average non-silicon valley companies would jump for Apple "Just Works" in their business?

Either they see something they don't like or a Gates/Jobs handshake said no.

Because Apple is fundamentally a consumer company. The marketing and branding that are huge drivers of their success just won’t work as well in the enterprise.

Enterprise means people in suits doing sales calls. It’s a patient, one-on-one, handholding process, and it’s just not in Apple’s DNA.

Far better for them to come up with some new consumer widget that also leverages their strength in supply chain. That’s what they’re good at, and it’s extraordinarily profitable.

While I largely agree with you, Apple can manage more than two things at once and money talks.

Microsoft obviously has large corporate presence, but also Xbox for example.

I just see so many already operational/technical/financial/branding assets in Apples favour compared to incumbents that I'm not sure how they'd fail to make money. OTOH, someone smarter than me in the company clearly thinks otherwise. I just wish I knew what they knew.

Maybe it is as you say, "just not Apple's DNA."