Darlings just a few years ago, the Fickle Finger of Fate has removed Sony and Microsoft from their glowing pedestals.

Have the gadget, software and content kings been replaced by the new media monopoly from Apple? An Apple monopoly? That’s nonsense, right? Apple topping Sony and Microsoft, as their fortunes fade?

More nonsense? I once would have agreed. No more. Apple is on the verge of eclipsing two major rivals and about to claim their own monopoly status. Both Sony and Microsoft were and are kings of their domains. Both are fading fast in the marketplace.

Their fade from days of glory is being hastened by Apple’s new arrival as the darling of everything. Over the past few years, Apple has bested Sorry Sony and Mediocre Microsoft again and again. Apple has a near monopoly in portable music and media players, while both Sony and Microsoft’s offerings are laughable.

Apple has cobbled together a dizzying array of popular gadgets, superb software, and a full range of media content. Apple, Apple, Apple-- Apple this and Apple that. You’d think no one else was building competitive products. Sony and Microsoft built themselves to the top of the gadget, media, and computer mountains but have faltered.

Sony’s products no longer carry the allure of years past. Microsoft’s fortunes and stock are propped up by deep pockets, not customer loyalty. Apple has all that and seems to weather storm after storm with sunny skies, and mild temperatures; a beach where they can do no wrong.

A case in point is the article Apple Wins When Content Is King. Apple is winning in hardware when Sony and Microsoft are not. Apple is winning in software while Microsoft stumbles, and Sony never gets off the starting line.

Content? The only blemish on Apple’s recent record of mixing and matching media players, music, movies, TV shows, is the anemic .Mac.

“Apple’s strategy is exactly the same as Gillette’s razor/blade strategy. Their long term goal is to get a razor into every house so that they can make a ton of money on the constant replacement of blades. This is also HP’s (HPQ) strategy for their printer and cartridges. It is every mobile phone operators strategy around the world where they subsidize hardware to earn recurring revenue on service.”

There’s a major tectonic shift taking place with the convergence of PC, the living room entertainment center, and electronic gadgets.

All are competing, but until Apple, no one is winning the war, and no one pieces together all we hold dear; music, movies, TV, portability, ease-of-use, chic flair, and price competitive.

Is Apple about to become a totally dominant player where once only giants stood?

“So if Michael Dell didn’t get it, I hope he does now. As for Microsoft (MSFT), boy oh boy are they in trouble yet again. If Apple owns the content experience and the hardware to deliver it, they have the opportunity to own everything behind it over time including… all the other software. Of course, Google knocking on the other side giving away free software for ad space isn’t helping.”

Will Sony and Microsoft fall to the wayside as Apple becomes a monopoly player? I say yes. The cards are stacked. Sony has fallen. Microsoft is falling.

Apple will rise and rule the masses as both Sony and Microsoft did in generations past.

As far as the way you’ve stated your argument, yes, I agree. iTV is going to carve Apple even further into our homes, invading our living rooms and big, luscious HD TVs. Nothing can touch iPod or iTunes.

But substantially, MS is a 3-trick pony. Windows in various flavors, Office for PC, and Office for Mac. That’s where the big $ is. And Apple is not a threat in any of those areas, yet.

The tide is changing, however. And slowly but surely, people are taking a harder look at Macs. Small businesses have discovered that it’s possible to go with Mac. We’ll see if this starts to erode MS’s dominance in the corporate space.

From a consumer perspective, I believe that as long as Steve Jobs is at the helm, Apple will not falter.  It’s after Steve that I wonder about.  The man essentially rebuilt Apple on the strength of his will (granted, I’m oversimplifying a bit), and dynasties have a nasty habit of falling into decadence after a few generations, whether they be families or otherwise.  I’d be interested to see how Apple is doing three people down the road from Steve Jobs.

I think that Apple still has a long way to go to make strides in the enterprise, which is where Microsoft still reigns.  The reasons why have been done to death in enough places that I won’t go in to them here.  I know that one of my employer’s biggest client companies is a big fan of eating its own dogfood - Windows XP Pro on their own brand of desktop and notebook workstations throughout their global operations.  Windows Server 2003 on most of their server hardware as well.  Heck, they even took away the Linux and Mac OS X VPN solutions not too long ago (now I gotta fire up Virtual PC just to check my email from home… Still using PPC-based Macs at home).

Further, many of the folks I know involved with the back-office segment of things (storage, networking, heavy-lift application servers, etc.) are still quite happy with Linux (our client company also has a substantial Linux development group).  More than a few companies of large size maintain enough IT muscle that they can easily roll their own server OSes from scratch.  Many of them haven’t seriously looked in to OS X Server aside from a “wow, that looks like fun” perspective because they flat don’t need what it offers.  Beyond that, we’re still in the territory that IBM rules.

Additionally, given that a substantial amount of corporate IT spending is on back-end kit, most companies really like to leverage that spending.  Apple’d have to bend a bit more than I think they’re willing to in order to woo that market segment, no matter how well-qualified the XServe and associated technology might be.  Oops, there I go, going in to what I said I wouldn’t.

That said, I sure wouldn’t mind seeing more Apple kit deployed in serious enterprise roles.  Macs have gained serious mindshare in the dev community over the past several years, and as some of those devs move up into management roles (it really DOES happen), those that go far will likely take their love of Apple into the C-level roles.  Of that small percentage, I’d anticipate a few would carry it far enough to actually start implementing Apple solutions.  It’ll take time, but I bet we’ll see Apple start to make gains outside the scientific and high-performance computing world.  Maybe we should have some sort of “Show your favorite developer your Mac” day or something.