Jim Cramer On Why The Tech Industry Not Matching Steps With The Market

In an article on CNBC, Jim Cramer said that the market rallied yet again on Monday but again, tech stocks refused to move up with the market. He mentioned that this has become a trend, forcing him to introspect on the cause. However, it is just a case of history repeating itself as technology is undergoing a major shift, with Apple AAPL being at the center of it. Remembering the history, Jim said that IBM IBM ruled the mainframe world in the 1980s until its key product was wiped out by minicomputers, which in turn fell pray to personal computers made by companies such as Apple. Apple got lost in oblivion when Intel INTC manufactured a cheap processor and Microsoft MSFT developed the Windows operating system. Meanwhile, Hewlett-Packard HPQ and Dell DELL ruled the enterprise and consumer markets. Microsoft and its Internet Explorer (IE) lead the browser market until Google GOOG came along and toppled MSFT. In the meantime, the smartphone revolution occurred and Research in Motion RIMM took over Nokia NOK. It was at this juncture that AAPL made a comeback with its iPhone and then the iPad, and grabbed the position of the king of tech. In this ongoing transition, only Apple and its suppliers are benefiting, much unlike previous transitions, where several companies profited. All other companies have either lost their value or seeing their price-to-earnings multiple contract. With iPad being tested by more than half of the Fortune 100 for enterprise use, Cramer believes that the device, if adopted, will prove to be the Trojan horse and help AAPL’s other products infiltrate the workplace. He mentioned, “All of these changes are so visible that people have given up on Microsoft and Intel and those that use the chips and the software… no matter what these two great companies say or do.” “What you are seeing is that people have pronounced all of tech dead, except for Apple and a couple derivative plays” such as Skyworks Solutions SWKS and Cirrus Logic CRUS, Jim stated. “There’s just too much non-Apple in hardware, software, the semis, the Web and networking. And Apple has not only stolen mindshare, it’s killing market share,” Cramer added. Read more on CNBC.