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Will artificial intelligence enable Apple to triumph again? The financial markets certainly seem to think so. The announcement that the company will bring generative AI to your iPhone powered the share price up by more than 7 per cent, taking the company’s market value back above $3trn and close to that of its arch-rival Microsoft.

But there have been a string of examples of high-tech companies whose fortunes have faded, and ahead of its annual Worldwide Developers Conference this week, some had wondered whether Apple’s glory days were past.

The genius of its co-founder Steve Jobs was to understand what people wanted from technology before they did themselves, and then create a beautiful product that met those desires. It is still worth watching his launch of the iPhone in 2007, starting with the words: “Every once in a while, a revolutionary product comes along that changes everything…”

It certainly changed Apple from being a computer company worth $78bn at the end of 2006, to the $3.18trn company it is now. Even now the iPhone generates 58 per cent of the company’s total revenue, and is arguably the most important product developed so far this century.

Jobs’ successor Tim Cook has managed to carry on building his legacy, but it is the revenue from the iPhone that drives the business.

I’ll come back to Apple’s future in a moment, for there is a wider issue here about the changing fortunes of high-tech enterprises in general: how some manage to retain their primacy, while others fade or, worse, collapse.

Take Vodafone, here in the UK. It is still a huge mobile phone service, worth nearly £19bn, or $25bn. But back in 2000 it was worth over $100bn. By contrast, Apple was worth just $7.5bn in 2001, making it an amazing investment for anyone who bought then and held onto their shares.

The fate of Finland’s Nokia, which dominated........

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