In the 21st century, there have been a lot of rivalry between several companies and their products but one of the oldest is that of Apple and Microsoft with the Mac OS and the Windows OS rivalry. This two companies have been competitors over the system and OS products, in fact, in the tech industry, the two companies are doing really well and are very strong contenders to one another. Both Apple and Microsoft are companies valued above $1T but would Apple still be existing if not for the intervention of Microsoft's Bill Gates, and why will Bill help a rival survive?
When Apple started, they wanted an enclosed system although innovative but not satisfying, like the Mac TV and PC combined which didn't meet the need of people as people preferred to buy a TV or a PC. Apple was very innovative going into several products including game console, PC, Newton Palmtop and so on but one thing was going wrong, they weren't having sales because there were no programs running on the Apple Mac OS and this made the company lose money heavily.
In 1997, when Steve Jobs arrived back to the company, Apple was 90 days away from bankruptcy and it needed a saving grace, luckily for them, Bill came to the rescue with $150M to invest. The Investment was a non-voting acquisition of shares in Apple, thereby saving the company from bankruptcy.
Microsoft didn't do this out of good will I will say, it was the dominant player in the industry and had crushed every competition that came its way thereby holding the industry to itself alone but as usual, anti trust was coming for it from the department of Justice. The Antitrust lawsuit was dropped three years after by the department of justice as well as Apple dropped its lawsuits saying Microsoft stole Mac OS products.
He was looking out for his coming Apple as well as a kind gesture to Apple. He was showing a kind gesture to his competitor as it would not be a threat to Microsoft. Do you think Apple would not have survived if Microsoft didn't save it and would Microsoft have won the Antitrust lawsuit if it didn't help Apple?
SOURCE
https://medium.com/datadriveninvestor/how-microsoft-saved-apple-from-bankruptcy-99e643b8b758