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Riiight. Apple is the world's second-largest corporation. Microshaft is 3rd? That's the kind of "catchup" I can believe in .

I'm pretty sure that MS isn't 3rd. More like 5th. Chevron is right behind Apple.

I think most companies would like to go the way Microsoft has gone.

http://www.theonlineinvestor.com/large_caps/

Microsoft is 2nd, and Apple is 7th.

Fisker is essentially outsourcing every aspect of their development but the resulting technology, and the profits, will accrue to the US business and be taxed in the US.

Right. So the economic benefits will only go to a select few who (if successful) become super-rich. The lions share of the economic benefits will go outside the United States, as profit margins for the auto industry are typically in the single digits.

SO the best case scenario is that a few people in the US get super-rich and we get to tax what the super-rich haven't been able to hide away using creative accounting and loopholes. The worst case scenario is nobody in the US makes any money, the US Government loses the loan, and all the money we loaned out goes overseas. So how is this such a great economic idea?

The percentages you came up with were 0.33%, assuming $1B revenues and average Open Source savings, and 0.11% for another company just below $1B but with average savings at the mid-sized company rate.

The net profit margin of the archetypal discount store, Wal-Mart, is 3.5%. If we assume the hypothetical $1B company has similar margins then an additional 0.33% would mean almost 10% higher profits. Sears, a typical large department store chain, has a profit margin of 1.6%. As you can see, this is fairly typical in their class. So, 0.33% would mean an increase in profits of over 20% if our hypothetical company had financial numbers like Sears.

Obviously, if a CEO were to implement a POS system or somesuch that yielded a savings of 3.3 million dollars, he could expect investor confidence to rise and that would be reflected in his stock options. I am sure that most CEOs bonuses are based at least partly on profits, so he could expect to be rewarded for his wisdom in choosing Open Source solutions.

And while the other company in your analysis had only 0.11% of their total revenue in additional profits, think of a $50M revenue company that was saving 1.1 million. That would be a significant increase. And keep in mind that use of Open Source software by corporations is still quite limited. The savings are sure to multiply as more and more Open Source is phased in.

The percentages you came up with were 0.33%, assuming $1B revenues and average Open Source savings, and 0.11% for another company just below $1B but with average savings at the mid-sized company rate.

The net profit margin of the archetypal discount store, Wal-Mart, is 3.5%. If we assume the hypothetical $1B company has similar margins then an additional 0.33% would mean almost 10% higher profits. Sears, a typical large department store chain, has a profit margin of 1.6%. As you can see, this is fairly typical in their class. So, 0.33% would mean an increase in profits of over 20% if our hypothetical company had financial numbers like Sears.

Obviously, if a CEO were to implement a POS system or somesuch that yielded a savings of 3.3 million dollars, he could expect investor confidence to rise and that would be reflected in his stock options. I am sure that most CEOs bonuses are based at least partly on profits, so he could expect to be rewarded for his wisdom in choosing Open Source solutions.

And while the other company in your analysis had only 0.11% of their total revenue in additional profits, think of a $50M revenue company that was saving 1.1 million. That would be a significant increase. And keep in mind that use of Open Source software by corporations is still quite limited. The savings are sure to multiply as more and more Open Source is phased in.

Please don't make such outlandish claims without at least a little bit of proof.

From 'theonlineinvestor.com': "Starbucks' management obviously understands what investors want, but in many ways they are also willing to buck conventional thinking. An example is the company's clustering strategy which doesn't pander to the comp-store metric. While most store chains typically worry about market saturation and cannibalization of sales by opening too many stores in close proximity, Starbucks has actually found success by clustering new stores near existing ones."

http://www.theonlineinvestor.com/company_spotlight .phtml?content=cs_sbux

Excerpt from the book 'No Logo': "The best example of this is Starbucks, who use a technique we can see happening right here, right now in Cambridge. They operate by clustering; in other words they saturate an area with Starbucks branches, which they can afford to run at a loss because of their multinational financial might. Because a town becomes so overloaded with coffee shops, this has the result that local cafes are forced to shut down. However, the Starbucks branches are able to stay open and remain as the only coffee shops in the town, thus leaving customers with no choice. This seems to conflict with the companies brand image of community and being a comforting third place but this cut-throat strategy directly accounts for the chains massive expansion since the early nineties, no matter how strenuously the company tries to deny it."

Just do a search for "starbucks clustering" on google. It's not a secret, it's a fact.

Don't people use search engines any more before posting a question like this?

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