Fred Wilson, co-founder of the New York-based Union Square Ventures made a fearless forecast that, by 2020, Apple will die down as the world's biggest tech company and will not even make it to the top three.
Wilson's company has investments on tech companies such as such as Twitter, Tumblr, Foursquare, Zynga, Kickstarter, and MongoDB.
During the Techcrunch Disrupt conference on Monday, Wilson predicted that two of the top three rankings will be occupied by Google and Facebook. However, the tech company that will round up the remaining slot is still unknown but hinted that it may be a new player. Twitter, on the other hand, will rank anywhere between top four to seven. He was certain though that it will not get the third spot.
"I sure hope that I'm an investor," he said, as quoted by Techcrunch.
Wilson explained the basis of his forecast about Apple losing its market dominance. He reasoned that the Cupertino, Calif.-based company is "too rooted to hardware." It also lack enough cloud features and had become less innovative since Steve Jobs passed away.
"I think hardware is increasingly becoming a commodity," he added. "Their stuff in the cloud is largely not good. I don't think they think about data and the cloud."
On the other hand, Wilson's forecast on Apple seemed misaligned with the tech giant's performance for the past 12 months. Records show that Apple's stock has increased by 31 percent as sales of its iPhones and iPads continue to grow.
But then again, there is Android that can contribute to the veracity of Wilson's forecast. The platform now dominates the smartphone industry and has immensely overtaken Apple's iOS. Other hardware manufacturers, led by Galaxy maker Samsung, are building future devices based on the platform, attracting more new users and eventually beating out Apple.
It may be hard to understand how the tables can turn dramatically in a span of six years. However, it would not be the first time that a tech company drops out in value. One example is Yahoo that was reported by CNN to lose its spot in Fortune 500 for the first time based on the annual report that will be published this coming June.
**Article has been edited to replace 10gen with "MongoDB."
