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Apple Surpasses Microsoft In Market Capitalization
je ne sais quoi writes "Today Apple surpassed Microsoft in market capitalization, a metric of the perceived worth of a company. At around 2:30 pm EDT, the total number of Apple shares were worth $227 billion, whereas Microsoft's were worth $226 billion. Both companies' stocks ended the day in the red, and have dropped in value since the Greek crisis began, but Apple's share price has been falling less quickly. Of American companies, only Exxon-Mobil has a higher market cap at this point at $278 billion. According to the article: 'This changing of the guard caps one of the most stunning turnarounds in business history, as Apple had been given up for dead only a decade earlier. But the rapidly rising value attached to Apple by investors also heralds a cultural shift: Consumer tastes have overtaken the needs of business as the leading force shaping technology.'"
Consumer tastes have overtaken the perceived needs of business as the leading force shaping technology.
There, fixed that for you. The day of the PHB making decisions based on the novelty of the promo mugs and pens they just received is coming to an end. Thank god.
I work for the Department of Redundancy Department.
...and?
"Destroy science and religion. Science would re-emerge exactly the same; but not religion." - Penn Jillette, paraphrased
the mother of all flame wars. The only way this article could only be more dangerous is if it were posted to 4chan.
Good people go to bed earlier.
Please don't tell the Apple fanboys about this, or we'll never hear the end of it.
There's no -1 for "I don't get it."
Microsoft hasn't really been growing for a decade, while Apple has. The market capitalisation often reflects this, because people are more willing to buy shares in a growing company, expecting that their value will increase over the next few years. People only buy shares in a stable company based on the expected dividends. This means that Apple's stock price is likely to be more volatile than Microsofts and, as long as the continue to be perceived as growing, greater than the current 'real' value of the company.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
Looks like an excellent bubble to take advantage of. Sell (or short) Apple, buy Microsoft.
I for one welcome our new evil overlords. *fearfully hides behind a veil of anonymity*
Shoulda waited...
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Apple is now officialy THE ENEMY here at slashdot. M$ is just another bad guy now.
Meet the guys, the Justice Department's anti-trust section.
Fuck systemd. Fuck Redhat. Fuck Soylent, too. Wait, scratch the last one.
The only thing this tells me is that investors are very slightly more confident in Apple's future.
Apple has a good business model for the current market, a vertically integrated company is well suited for fluctuation during violent market turns because investors worry less about shortages, missed financial targets and product competition. Microsoft is *hardly* moved by this in reality, though, and still makes most of their money on business licensing - and they are doing fine. MS employees are still having the private jet weddings to the caribbean with ice fountains flowing with rum.
I said no... but I missed and it came out yes.
...we're all seriously fucked.
Apple's imaginary value is greater than Microsoft's imaginary value. Now I'll have to spend some of my imaginary money to buy an imaginary Apple to get some imaginary work done.
Are you going to drop Micro$oft now? Is it $teve Job$? O$ X? What?
Apple's PE ratio is also 2x of MSFT, Walmart, IBM, GE, XOM etc...
This is the biggest pile of horse-shit I've ever seen. All the fanbois should lose their shirts on this one. Apple is a BIT PLAYER that only accounts for a SINGLE-DIGIT percentage of the computer industry. Microsoft is pretty much everything else. Are you fucking kidding me?!?
It's like saying that the Mom & Pop grocery store on the corner is as large (or larger) than General Electric. Give me a fucking break.
Apple is Evil.
"It was ten years ago today, all my tech stocks blew away,
they've been going in and out of style, but you're guaranteed to lose a pile"
apologies to Sir Paul...
But seriously, folks, this is a bubble price. Like the $656,565 valuation on that crappy three-room clapboard box-house that you almost bought in Fresno three years ago. *I hope that you passed that one by*.
Bubbles exist in markets. When they burst, the people who believed that the price was a realistic valuation lose most if not all of their money.
Now is the time to sell your Apple stock. EXXON owns the world's energy supply: Apple owns some coolness. Is Apple the second most valuable company in the world behind Exxon?
No f***ing way.
A lot of people lost a lot of money believing in tech stocks ten years ago. Heed their lesson.
Serious question: Windows had fanboys? I always figured Windows was for people who didn't care (I mean that in the nicest possible way).
That they're the current Evil Empire(TM) now?
Agreed. Exxon-Mobil generates billions of dollars in profits every quarter, and likely owns 100s of billions of infrastructure, while Apple has some cool toys and a couple of retail stores.
Wow, a 7 digit ID - let that be a lesson in the perils of procrastination.
Had I not dumped my 100 shares of Apple after the dot com crash, I'd be about $22,000 wealthier right now. Of course, I also owned Oracle, Microsoft, EMC... ah, who the hell knows. That's why I only buy index funds now. Of course, those haven't done anything in ten years either. Real estate? Ha! Time to start stuffing cash under my bed. But not dollars!
Only foolish (lowercase f) investors believe market capitalization (or number of shares times share price) is meaningfull as any real metric of the value of a company or it's stock. It can be a valuable indicator of a company that's price is way to high though (usually because of stupid investors).
Let me give in you an example, it's a test I call the Walmart Test. Walmart does billions in revenue a year and make billions in profit, they are a highly successful business with solid growth in earnings every quarter, reliable profits and has a massive book value (the total value of assets). At the peak of the Dotcom era Cisco had a market capitalization that was the highest on the stock market, close to 500B IIRC. This exceeded the Walmart Market cap by more than 5 times (~76Billion IIRC) and edged GE by several dozen Billion. Even if every dollar of revenue for Cisco was profit and that profit was passed directly to shareholders they weren't even a 1/5th of the earnings per share Walmart was making. In the ideal world all profit from the enterprise passes onto the stockholder, in fact that's the basis of the worth, the promise of future dividends for companies that are reinvesting capital rather than paying a dividend (but that's another lecture all together)
Because Cisco was valued so much higher than Walmart with significantly less earnings it was apparent that the stock was highly overvalued. Later at the dot-boom correction Cisco lost nearly 90% of their market capitalization (falling to less than 10Billion from 500Billion). That translated into a decline in price of the stock by about 90%. The same can be said for Apple, compared against real (boring) companies making solid profits they are extremely overvalued. Even if Apple were to grow sales 100% a year for 5 years they still couldn't match Microsofts actual profits. If you are looking for a long time short Apple is your game boys and girls. It's going to correct some day and it's going to be a brutal correction.
This over-valuation is quite common in tech stocks, people invest in companies whose products they like (terrible investment strategy BTW). Stocks of this nature are almost 100% over valued and when they correct due to bad news it's a very vivid correction. Beta on these stocks can be 3-5 because of the casual investor who panics at the bad news, that and the stocks usually have high short percentages that will exacerbate a drop.
The lesson of this post People is don't invest based on meaningless metrics and in tech stocks with rabid fan-bases that invest in the company. They are almost always over priced, and react much faster to negative news with the potential for much larger declines in the price. Put simply the market cap of Apple should scare you away from investing in it easily.
This "story" is either an intentional troll or it was posted by someone who has no clue.
Market capitalization means dick in the overall scheme of things, especially since it can change at the drop of a hat. Changing of the guard? What the hell does market capitalization have to do with that? It might mean something if you had two companies who compete in exactly the same market segments, but Apple and MS only compete in a couple.
You can't compare Apple to Microsoft unless you specify what market segment your talking about. Going strictly by market capitalization alone is idiotic. You might as well compare Boeing to Walmart and then claim there is a changing of the guard.
~X~
Wolfram|Alpha is great.
According to that excellent tool, Apple was valued higher than Microsoft through the '80s, as high as 3.2x as much as Microsoft. Then, right around the turn of the decade to 1990, Microsoft pulled ahead.
By 1998, Microsoft was worth 100x Apple.
Now, they're back up to even.
Another non-functioning site was "uncertainty.microsoft.com."
The purpose of that site was not known.
...imagine a whole Beowulf cluster of Apple companies!
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
Is that AAPL is grossly overvalued. Especially when you consider price to earnings and return on equity. Microsoft sells 8 billion more per year than Apple (59 bn vs 51 bn), and keeps a larger percentage of it as profit. Sales growth has also been greater for MSFT than for AAPL. And Microsoft pays a dividend to boot, Apple doesn't.
But I guess like everything else Apple, it's no surprise that their stock is overpriced as well. Feel free to buy it.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
Market capitalization is only the value of a company's equity and not its debt and is accordingly a function of its capital structure (debt to equity ratio).
Enterprise value is a combination of the market value of the debt and equity of a company. As such, it is not distorted by the capital structure of the company.
Using this less biased measure, Apple has an enterprise value of $200B whereas Microsoft's is $197B
insightful commentary in the article: The fact that taste has overcome business value is a sign that the price is likely overvalued, though who knows for sure. When fair value isn't in play, I'd say it's cause for a second look.
Good luck, Apple investors!
Those Harvard profs are paid for their research and consulting, not their teaching.
Oh, yeah, it's not easy to pad these out to 120 characters.
http://www.apple.com/pr/library/2010/01/25results.html
Um, Apple generates billions of dollars in profits each quarter as well. Sorry, what was your point?
Not that I disagree with what you're saying in principle, but national oil companies (I.e. Aramco, the Saudi Government oil company) produce 52% of the world's oil and hold 88% of the proven reserves of oil. XOM is a huge, ginormous, supermajor company, but they don't hold nearly the resources of the NOC's.
sig?
Quite. Price/earning ratios over 20 are very high. I'm not saying Apple won't have good growth, but at 24, it's almost like betting that they'll bring out another iPhone or iPod, and we just don't know that.
Greek. Mod me troll, offtopic, whatever. Getting something like this wrong is a big deal. It is not a greek crisis, but a Greek crisis. It is a crisis of the national government of Greece. Moreover, since "greek" is rarely used as an adjective on Slashdot, it reads too easily as "geek" which is a common adjective here, so the submitter and editor would need to be extra careful to avoid confusion.
Yet another instance where an editor worth their salt would perform their appointed duties and correct submitted text, but a Slashdot editor fails to do so.
Put my fist through my alarm clock with its ding-dong death inside my ear. - The Blackjacks.
I think DOS did, but I can't really remember there ever being any for Windows. Or at least those that were chose to be as a sort of geek machismo. Or something like that. Apple was sort of always that girl that you knew you could score with, but couldn't really bring yourself to settle for. Whereas Windows was pretty much always a cast iron bitch that was always throwing some sort of hissy fit over things not being completely correctly done.
I think the high point in the history of Microsoft was when they released Windows 2000. Here was an operating system that multi-tasked well, had perfected integrated networking and didn't blue screen. I remember a lot of people who had been using Redhat 9, which was crap, switched back to Microsoft and noticed that it didn't crash that much and they were pretty happy using it.
Then came WindowsXP and IE6, which gave everybody pretty much everything they wanted in an OS. It was easily pirateable and spread all over the world.
Then came malware, botnets, and the ensuing security disaster of science fiction proportions and Microsoft spent the next 10 years plugging security holes. Those were the big feature with Vista and Windows 7 remember-- more secure. This was all the fault of Microsoft demanding that unmanaged x86 code with full access to the win32 api run everywhere. It's an enormous, outlandish security hole just waiting to happen.
Meanwhile, I went to visit a relative in the hospital and all the computers are running Win2k. If you look at OS share online, WinXP still dominates. Nobody really knows what's new in Office 2010, except you can read Office 2010 files and that ribbon thing. China was a total disaster for Microsoft too. They even shared their source code and it's only 1 percent of their revenue.
Meanwhile Apple and Linux really got their act together and improved massively. Then the 3g and portable device boom happened and Microsoft was caught with Windows Mobile, in the face of Android and Iphone. They couldn't leverage their massive x86 code base and had to start over with a new OS from scratch. That's their problem, they have to start over on a new chipset and they just can't get anywhere meaningful without relying on the enormous barrier to entry that is the win32 api legacy.
The posts here that claim that Apple and/or Microsoft are over-valued might be right. I don't know.
But: there is indeed a change taking place. As the article in the NY Times says, "Consumer tastes have overtaken the needs of business as the leading force shaping [endpoint information] technology".
I think that the PC approach (which is also exemplified by the Mac) is unsustainable. Those operating systems (Mac OS, Windows, etc.) are too complex for the average user and too insecure and flaky to be used as the foundation of a base platform for truly ubiquitous computing. We need OS that are simpler, more robust, and more mobile from the ground up: OSs that don't require a user to be a system administrator.
The OS used by the iPad is not yet full featured enough to serve the needs of most users. Indeed, people do write documents, edit images, do more than one thing at a time. However, I expect that the iPad and other mobile OSs will fill out in the coming years. They are a fresh start, and a chance for the industry to do better.
Honestly, Windows 7 is pretty nice, I think that the developer tools, from a get it done perspective are some of the best available. Beyond this, I don't see much real benefit to windows over other systems in this day and age (beyond the compatibility, and massive software base). Most of the applications I use daily outside of work have non-windows alternatives, and for those left, there's always Citrix or Terminal Services. I think a lot of the management tools are easier to use as well. I actually see better use of windows in large corporate networks than smaller ones, and most home users not playing newer (resource hungry) games.
So, aside from the huge number of available applications, compatibility with older versions of applications, more polished system management tools for enterprise deployments, better support for newer hardware, for gaming, and the best security record in OSes for the past couple years, I couldn't possibly see why someone who's informed would choose windows.
It seems only yesterday (1997):
"What would I do?" Mr. Dell said to an audience of several thousand information technology managers. "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16/technology/16apple.html
Luke, help me take this mask off
My thoughts exactly, came in here to post:
"Time to buy some Microsoft stock then"
Surely Apple make money of their (not trolling here even though it may look like that) over-priced hardware, and also got some software titles beyond OS X. But Microsoft isn't all about Windows either and their market influence and brand-knowledge / weight on the market should still weight higher, or at least so I'd assume.
The phone and tablet business I see as fast growing markets where one product or company may be great one year just to slack 2-3 years later. Sure market value may reflect the current status but yeah.. One great phone right now don't make it the best phones forever.
And the greatest phones would had been HTCs anyway ;D
Their computers are just like any other computers. So nothing special with them except the price ..
Make me wonder what the value is of Apples non-OS X software business though, compared to Microsoft. Anyone got any values? How many products have each? How much do they sell for and how big are the profits?
Office may have lost some of its perceived value compared to the free options but it's still what's used and sold so I doubt it have affected sales much.
Office furniture makers are enjoying a banner year selling to Redmond, especially chairs.
This is the biggest pile of horse-shit I've ever seen. All the fanbois should lose their shirts on this one. Apple is a BIT PLAYER that only accounts for a SINGLE-DIGIT percentage of the computer industry. Microsoft is pretty much everything else. Are you fucking kidding me?!?
It's like saying that the Mom & Pop grocery store on the corner is as large (or larger) than General Electric. Give me a fucking break.
This particular metric - which might not really be well described by its name in this case - is concerned with the total consumer investment in each. It really doesn't reflect at all how "large" the companies are, and certainly has almost nothing to do with the number of customers they each have or how they penetrate their markets.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I think the point is that owning the world's energy source is a stable, lasting source of earnings. Do you know how fast all the teenagers out there can find something different 'cool'?
Call me when Apple's PE ratio gets back down to 14 or so. Then maybe I'd buy it.
Apple's income last year $5.7B. IBM's income last year $13.4B. Apple's PE is 22, IBM's is 12. And IBM pays a dividend rather than back dating options for Steve Jobs
Support SETI@home
Uhh, no, it's like comparing Boeing with Lockheed-Martin.
Mod this AC up
Support SETI@home
Yes. Apple is selling media it does not own down telco pipes to devices it does not make to people who can change interests in the matter of months.
Apple physically is the desktop, a few servers and ?
The only way they make it work is to get a % with every transfer.
That % chase down is the property of a Finnish tyre company and its toxic Asian production lines.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Repeatedly.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Okay, so do we now hate Apple and like Microsoft? I'm really confused.
Sig it.
The only fanboys on Windows have a rational reason for their fanboyism. Either they're an MS evangelist (paid by MS), an MVP (title and perks dependant upon MS) or sales people (getting paid).
But even amongst .net developers, you'll get some healthy discussion about Windows or features in .net and Visual Studio. No-one defends it with religious fervour.
Apple is the second most valuable company in the world behind Exxon. Look it up.
Actually, it's the second most valuable American company in the world, not second overall.
There are no Windows fanboys, but there are people who hate OS X and Linux more.
Dislike the Electoral College? Lobby your state to join the National Popular Vote Interstate Compact.
i guess if it makes the fanbois happy...
No, because then they're not as elite anymore because Apple is all mainstream. An analogy:
It's like when that band is followed by shaggy-haired, goateed art school graduates in faux homeless clothing, but then the band becomes popular and all the shaggy-haired goateed art school graduates in faux homeless clothing get mad because they "sold out."
Only instead of a band it's Apple.
And instead of shaggy-haired, goateed art school graduates in faux homeless clothing, it's...well it's still shaggy-haired, goateed art school graduates in faux homeless clothing, don't really need to analogize that part.
So what, you ask? Everyone thought Apple was dead a decade ago. Little did they know that Steve Jobs was merely pining for the fjords. And now he has reached the fjords and waved to Microsoft on the way by. Tie this in to Steve Jobs recent statement that he will reveal something surprising at the upcoming WWDC keynote, and this indicates that Steve Jobs will unveil a new product: the iFjord.
Want to improve your Karma? Instead of "Post Anonymously", try the "Post Humously" option.
I'm wondering if Microsoft has simply plateaued. Yes, they'll sell lots of the flagship products, but I suspect for the most part these are people buying new computers and/or upgrading Windows or Office installs. There's a point at which growth is going to stall out, which is why Microsoft has burned considerable amounts of money trying to branch out, and burned money they have. How much money have they blown on the Xbox, on the rebranding of MSN every four or five years, on Zune?
I'm no fan of Apple, but where Microsoft seems at times like a crazed octopus just wildly flinging out its arms trying to hit on the next BIG THING, Apple has taken a much more disciplined approach, and for the most part over the last decade has simply kicked ass. Jobs has steered the company in an extremely profitable direction, translating Apple's hardware expertise into product niches that exploded. There was a time when Gates was that good at reading the market, but Ballmer is just a mean-spirited one-dimensional bean counter (to be fair, even Gates screwed up plenty, nearly missing the growing importance of the Internet, but Microsoft had the sheer dominance to push out a horrible OS with the worst TCP/IP layer in history and sell it). Jobs is a monopolistic megolomaniacal whackjob, but he goes got a good market compass.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
It'll continue to be M$ as long as Microsoft still makes Visual Basic. And App£€ has even more currency signs.
It struck me too, how Ballmer could still be in charge, after his "achievements". But this is Corporate America, where meritocracy is long time perished, unfortunately.
It did had fanboys, I was one of them. Believe it or not there was a time when microsoft products were exciting. This days I know they are always devising new ways to charge me more money for a product that does less and less. It just stopped beign fun.
Really? Let's see:
Microsoft - Year ending December 31, 2009, Net Income $16.26 Billion on Revenues of $58.69 Billion
Apple Inc. - Year ending December 31, 2009, Net Income $7.477 Billion on Revenues of $42.05 Billion
According to you, if Apple grew sales 100% per year for 5 years, over that period they'd earn $16.26 billion in net income on revenues of more than $1.3 Trillion. Let's assume Apple's net income remains 17.78% of revenue. On sales of $1.303 Trillion, they'd show net income of $231 billion, not $16.26 billion as you assert.
We're supposed to take any part of your post seriously? You're spouting bullshit in such an authoritative manner you'd be right at home behind the anchor desk of Fox News.
Apple's imaginary value skyrockets, until Steve Jobs has another medical problem.
Windows 7 is da BOMB! Office... It just works! And I can do sooo much using Excel and VBA macros! Who doesn't like PowerPoint? For devs, Visual Studio is the BEST tool chain on the market. There's nothing it can't do! Hey, and let's not forget the hardware! Microsoft makes the BEST keyboard and mouse on the planet. And the Zune! Oh man I LOVE that thing. WOW, I almost forgot the X-Box 360. I can't tell you the number of hours I've spent playing on my X-Box...
*GAG* Was that fanboy enough?
We hear and obey, Oh Other Steve who does not give us root on our own hardware either.
-
Not that I'd argue MS has done anything different than they always have, just seen a lot more press on Apple and rather dubious strong-arm moves. For example
http://www.sevensidedcube.net/business/2010/apple-investigated-for-abuse-of-power-in-the-online-music-market/
You're looking at the wrong thing. If you compare AAPL and IBM, AAPL has much more growth in revenue and income. You need to compare forward looking PE for a fair comparison of whether the stock price is justified.
So we have the latest news on the competition between a nefarious closed-source near monopoly on the one hand, and a nefarious closed-source and closed-platform wannabe monopoly on the other hand.
As Henry Kissinger said during the Iran-Iraq war, "Too bad they can't both lose."
Proud member of the Weirdo-American community.
What?! I don't know what Slashdot you've been reading all these years but the worst trolls on this entire site are the Windows nutters. They make the Linux and Apple fans look like amateurs. Go through the posting histories of some of the more notorious ones like Westlake, Soppsa, D'Aldredge, HarryPorter. The insane zealotry would be enough to make RMS shed a tear. As a matter of fact, I had to just give up on the site for about 6 months during the run up to the Zune HD. The absurd levels of fanboy zealotry was just embarrassing. You couldn't read one story that actually had anything resembling objective opinions of it. It was really ridiculous. And when Windows 7 was in the news, oh my god, it was sickening. I come here in the hopes of getting some honest on the ground tech insight and maybe some entertaining water cooler style banter from professionals in the field. But between the MS zealots, the Mac cult and the rest, I've actually found Digg to be a better source. And don't get me started on Engadget and Techcrunch. Pure MS fanboy circle jerk.
Look, while I agree with some of the basic feeling you've put in here, I can't let this go.
Somewhere up the comment tree is someone with an exceptionally long view: all companies go out of business eventually. Thus, unless a company gives back to investors some profits investors eventually get nothing for their investment. It's true in theory but fortunately capitalism doesn't work that way in practice. Companies can persist for a very long time, change their mode from growth to utility and back again. They can pay dividends, investors can reap benefit from their voting rights or increased access to timely information that being a shareholder provides. They can, through their investment participate in the great things that a corporation can do through pooled capital. Ultimately a well-run company can pay out far more than is paid in adjusted for inflation in addition to the socially useful things they do like build dams, railroads and asteroid mines. Most don't.
You are correct that a "share" is a fraction of ownership of the corportation and so at any point in time is a nominal ownership of this vast pooled capital thing that is the corporation - so it does have point-in-time real value as well as a perceived value in the market. And so you're correct in a way, from a point of view.
But then your metaphor breaks down. Take, for example, Adaptec. Here's a company that has great products that, beset by poor management squandered huge opportunities until it's now being scuttled by an vulture fund. Novell is a future example. Then there's companies that really go off the rails, like SCO, which has taken half a billion dollars in paid-in capital and in their long history only turned a profit in one quarter, and a court later found they stole much of that. Then there are even worse examples, but you get the idea.
Now, that would be a fair comparison to an investment in a bar of gold if your investment were some certificate of shared ownership of a bar of gold in someone else's care. They could steal it. They could lose it. They could hire some fool to mind it. They could throw huge parties with the money you paid for your certificates of ownership (paper or digital) and laugh at what a fool you are and never buy any gold at all. If your investment were on the other hand an actual physical gold bar (or more commonly a stack of well-known gold coins) that was physically in your possession then to lose the actual intrinsic value of your gold they would have to come to where you kept it, overcome your security measures and probably risk some physical harm to their persons without the protection of either lawyers or distance. Now that's not the same thing.
So no, ownership of equities is not similar to ownership of a gold bar - but has some similarity to ownership of shares in one theoretically held by someone else.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Or they're people like me who do CAD, schematic capture, and other technical jobs with software that only runs on Windows, and runs very well. In other words, we make money with it, rather than "hipster marks" while updating our Facebook account at the local Starbucks with our Mac.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Just as Windows copies Mac OS, the fanboys have done the same, and act just as bad as Apple fanboys.
How is Porsche doing in market share? Market share only makes sense within some boundaries, and 'computer' isn't any better than 'vehicle'; each of those is stratified. What market is apple competing in? The only-computers-that-aren't-shit market? I think their doing very well...
Thriller had market share in 'albums', selling far more than, say Dark Side of the Moon or Abbey Road.
Dennis Miller quipped that 2 for 1 was not a bargain, because 2 of shit is just more shit. If they really wanted to fuck you, they'd make you take 3.
But, they would gain market share....
Last year, Exxon made about 2.5 times the profit of Apple, and had about 8 times the revenue. They also pay a nice dividend on their stock. How Apple is valued so close to Exxon really is a mystery. You need energy to live; mp3 players and iPhones? Not so much.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Their profit margin is LOWER than Microsoft's. Just sayin'.
Call me when Apple's PE ratio gets back down to 14 or so. Then maybe I'd buy it.
That makes no sense. AAPL has been growing like crazy. IBM has not. So you'd rather buy IBM and get a bit of growth and some dividends, over AAPL, which would give you massive growth and no dividends?
PE ratio is not some hard and fast rule. In fact, the only real rule is how things end up. AAPL is so high because of Apple's continued growth. Investors see the iPhone and iPad as major growth markets for Apple. Microsoft, on the other hand, isn't growing at all. In almost every market, from OSs to phones to browsers, they are losing market share. The only place they are doing well, in terms of market share, is in gaming, and somewhat ironically, they've only lost money there.
So there's no real growth for Microsoft, so their PE is low. There's lots of growth for Apple, so their PE is higher. Same with IBM, no real growth, lower PE.
Do we now prefer Microsoft to Apple now? Last I knew Slashdot likes the underdog.
Since 2003, qualified dividends are taxed at 15% (0% if you're in the 15% tax bracket). This will end at the end of this year.
Call me when that market share is based on something a little less transitory. Ipads are going to end up being a bust for all the same reasons all other tablets are a bust. The iphone will continue to make money and do well, but it's market over dominance is coming to an end with Android and the like. Once the novelty of these devices wanes and the 'hippness' of Apple beings to fall people will realize they are overpriced and under perform. Apple has done great before, and they always fail in the follow up.
Good luck with that. Apple's been a growth company for the last decade and seems to intend to remain so. IBM isn't a growth company, it's in utility mode for more than 20 years turning good dividends but not trying to take over the world. As a result, Apple has more cash on hand today than 3x the entire value of the company 10 years ago and no debt. As a growth company that doesn't dominate most of the segments it's in, Apple's upside potential is huge.
IBM is still a strong conservative investment for folks who want to be confident their investment will grow into enough of an asset to retire on - especially if they reinvest their dividends.
There are several modes for companies, but Growth, Utility and Salvage modes are the commonest. In Salvage mode the folks with the most influence in the company get what they can out of it, and to hell with the common investor. This subsector of corporate governance is quite interesting for the morbidly curious. For companies that have achieved the heights we're talking about it turns into a freeding frenzy where a school of lawyers turn into a feeding frenzy of zombie sharks. It becomes a cancer that affects every company the giant ever touched. The lawyers eventually take conditional fractional options on the success of hopeless suits against unrelated third parties, because what else are they going to do with their idle time - work?
Growth companies pull more PER because they're agressive about growth. Duh. You want some of those in your folder if you're going to retire with something more in your retirement account than you put in.
Microsoft though? One big dividend ever on Bill's retirement from CEO (Coincidence? I think not.), and some symbolic trivial dividends since. Microsoft isn't managed to be a good value for all investors - it's managed to be a good value for a specific set of five investors, all of whom have incidental investments in related companies and who are incidentally on the board of directors. It's clear the company isn't managed for the benefit of the common investor.
Q: If a public company like Microsoft's Board of Directors chose to offload all of the value of a company onto affiliated companies in unwise for the company but wise for the boardmembers deals, how long would it take? A: an afternoon.
Q: How likely is this to happen during the course of my investment? A: Follow the money. Nature abhors a vacuum.
Q: If this huge value transfer happened how soon would it be public information? A: Several months later.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
Windows had fanboys?
yep.
I think Govt should regulate the market capitalization of all listed companies to twice their quarterly revenue to inject real competition in the economy.
For e.g. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fed regulates the reserve requirements & interest rates to promote sustainable economic growth.
I'd like to buy homeland for our 10 million people. http://twitter.com/mahadiga
The Xbox at least took significant market share from Sony, and is rumored to be approaching profitability. The Zune failed to grab any iPod share but we see now that MP3 players were only a passing, transitional market.
But Windows Mobile, in its various incarnations, has been a major player in handheld computing since before any of its current competitors. They should have had such a head start that they'd be uncatchable, just like in desktop computing. Instead, they are getting their butt kicked by upstarts like Google and Apple, and their biggest customer (HP) just bought its own mobile OS in Palm. Microsoft is getting their butt kicked so bad in mobile that they have TWO start-from-scratch efforts, Kin and Windows 7. This after Ballmer basically laughed at the iPhone when it came out.
Mobile computing has the potential to dwarf the PC market that Microsoft has dominated. Huge sections of the planet are jumping straight from mobile phones to mobile computing, skipping the desktop PC and MP3 market phases altogether. Just look at Apple--after only three years they now make more money from phones than they do from computers.
Build a man a fire, he's warm for one night. Set him on fire, and he's warm for the rest of his life.
Wow, I didn't think I'd have to dig this deep into the thread to find the pointed comment to reply to.
Apple sells servers, workstations, desktops, laptops, tablets, digital video recorders, cellular phones and media devices. In each of those fields they achieve far more margin per unit than any competitor... and yet that's only an introduction to what they sell because each of those things comes with access to a store that's open 24/7 no matter where you are that can add functionality or content to it, and they turn a profit on that as well - in fact, these "blades" constitute far more profit than the "razor" they sold to access and use it. Apple has come to the position of selling access to their razor for blade vendors. Microsoft was in this position once long ago, and worked it for all they could get.
None of this has any bearing on the actual issue of the day, and I'm not going to tell you here. You'll have to either click my userid or scan that relevant coment in the regular course.
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Perception.
Exxon, MS, IBM et al. all have real products with real continuous revenue streams. Apple has a very carefully crafted image, Apple's perceived value is around Apples potential for growth, Exxon's perceived value is around Exxon having an asset and a market. So in order for Exxon to maintain it's position it simply needs to keep doing what it's doing, if Apple's insane level of growth does not continue the bottom will fall right out, this is why people think its a bubble. People forget when Steve bandies about the x hundred percent growth over Q1 2009 is that Q1 2009 was in the middle of the worst economic times in living memory, not even WWII saw this level of economic damage.
I should be fair, it's not just Jobs touting this, HTC, Dell, HP are all reporting a bumper Q1 for 2010, all using the same flawed statistic I mentioned above but by far Apple has been the loudest.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Apple's stock value is based on the perception of a phenomenal rate of growth. Microsofts stock value is based on steady sales.
.com bust. In the GFC, safe things like oil, iron and the USD lost 50% of their value overnight.
MSFT maintains its value by doing the same amount of business each year, if APPL does not maintain its phenomenal rate of growth its stock will drop. MS survived it's worst news in it's entire history, vista was a massive failure and businesses have been cutting back on Windows licenses like mad yet MSFT stocks are in a slow decline. If Apple posts just one quarter of loss, or one serious Mac/Iphone virus outbreak then stockholders will jump ship, when this happens the stock price will plummet. The GP said this but you got stuck on the details of an analogy, not the point.
In case you haven't been paying attention for the last few years, this is exactly what happened to the economy in most of the western world. US and European governments gambled on an unrealistic rate of economic growth, when this reached a tipping point (the rate of growth slowed) economies collapsed. Now Apple is gambling on an unrealistic growth rate in sales, it's stock price is the wager as Apple has no real assets to back it up unlike MS (who went through a similar decline when Vista was rejected by business). We call it a bubble because when it bursts, there will be little of it left, it wont reduce by 10%, it will reduce by 50-90% like the
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Serious question: Windows had fanboys? I always figured Windows was for people who didn't care (I mean that in the nicest possible way).
Strangely enough, yes. They were people who had grown up knowing only MS-DOS, and therefore thought that Windows 95 was alien future technology. They'd heard of Macs but never used one, and of course they had no idea what an Amiga was.
I don't care if it's 90,000 hectares. That lake was not my doing.
It's also the people who are proud of memorizing volumes of minutia about how to cope with Windows' myriad failures. It's like the C++ weenies who are smug about mastering needless complexity.
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
Apple's Price/Earnings ratio is 20.7. Adobe's is 46. I know which one I'd consider overpriced. ;-)
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
One of these things is not like the other one. Tracking back you can see that over the last decade Steve Ballmer has managed to retain almost half of the company's value over his reign. Steve Jobs on the other hand has built the abandoned-for-dead company he agreed to pilot into great wealth, more than 20x the value of the company he agreed to lead, with enough cash to buy that old company four times over.
I think there was a parable about this.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
I rather like Appl€ :)
---
The scary thing is, a lot of those are true (or at least close).
Windows 7 is a great OS. Not sure how it compares to MacOSX, never used that. Windows Media Center is pretty awesome.
Office... OpenOffice is catching up, I could probably do without Office.
Excel: Pivot Tables. If you've never used/heard of pivot tables, you don't know what you're missing. Everything else in excel could be replaced by OpenOffice Calc.
Who doesn't like powerpoint? Not managers (gah double negative). Everyone else hates it purely because of their presentations.
Visual Studio IS the best toolchain on the market. I just couldn't develop as quickly without "Intellisense" autocomplete, despite all the people who recommend alternate programs that only have syntax highlighting.
I don't know about keyboard, but the 5-button wired MS mice are awesome. I bet there are others that are as good, if not better, but I already have this mouse.
Zune? Haha.
360? Best console out at the moment. And I'm saying that as a dev who's currently making a PS3 game. I don't know if that biases me or just reinforces the argument. Then there's the Wii, which isn't really in the argument. It's not Wii vs 360 vs PS3, but Wii+360 vs Wii+PS3. Everyone seems to own one these days.
Considering that said energy source is running out (or pouring into the Gulf of Mexico) and there's extremely clever people working on competing products all over the planet...just how stable is it?
There is an infinite, for all intents and purposes, source of energy conveniently positioned directly overhead(if you're in the right spot, at noon) and we're getting better at tapping it all the time.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
Serious question: Windows had fanboys? I always figured Windows was for people who didn't care (I mean that in the nicest possible way).
Yes, they're populating Neowin.net and other places, keeping to find arguments for the new Microsoft Kin, Zune and Zune Marketplace, etc. Lots of news about Bing too, but not anymore, now that it was shown that MS didn't succeed with that redesign either.
Beware: In C++, your friends can see your privates!
I guess I forgot the disclosure statement... I am a Windows user with machines running XP, Vista and Windows 7. I work as an engineer who spends a lot of time doing software dev. on Visual Studio. I'm responsible for a number of data manipulating forms and spreadsheets, all done with Office, at the company I work for. I own a Windows mobile phone. I'm typing this on a Microsoft Natural keyboard sitting next to a Microsoft wireless mouse. I don't own a Zune, my WM phone does double duty. I don't own a 360 -- I'm just not a gamer.
is the restaurant chain with the largest market cap, but it doesn't mean I'd eat there...
You can never know everything, and part of what you do know will always be wrong. Perhaps even the most important part.
That's not fanboyism. That's liking Windows because it's the best tool for you. That's a rational way to look at products; does the product meet my requirements in terms of features, aesthetics, service etc.
Fanboyism is more about associating yourself with Apple. So if Apple produce a dud product, or Steve Jobs does a complete u-turn on how apps should be delivered, you don't say "hang on, didn't he say that web apps were the best way to do things?", you either just ignore it or come up with a ridiculous defence of Apple.
And most Apple users aren't Fanboys. I've got 2 friends who just prefer OSX. They'll tell me about things on their Mac if I ask, or they'll write about something new that they like on their Mac, but they'll also point out things they don't like and don't harp on at Windows users about how they should get a Mac.
Just perhaps..Apple's stock price is overvalued? I mean (and this may come as a surprise to some) it has happened before that the stock price was not an absolute measure of a company's future income and dividends!
Apple is the second most valuable company in the world behind Exxon. Look it up.
Actually, it's the second most valuable American company in the world, not second overall.
Not even that I'm afraid, it's the second most valuable publicly traded company on the NYSE. I suspect Cargill would have a higher market cap if it were not privately owned.
It is THE Greek crisis. Not just any Greek crisis but THE one.
A Greek crisis would be a crisis of a certain type.
The Greek crisis refers to the one most talked about at the moment.
See: a confidence crisis vs the banking crisis. The banking crisis is the recent one, a banking crisis is just a crisis involving banks.
Yet another instance where a poster worth their salt would perform their appointed duties and correct submitted text, but a Slashdot poster fails to do so.
Note that my comment is funny. Anyone pointing out errors in my post is just sad. ;)
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Aren't the equivalent of those called Data Pilots in OOo? Or are they a weak alternative?
(I don't really know, I rarely touch Office suites - generally I don't care about manual formatting so I use Lyx).
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I'm an black nerd patriot rebel artist punk emo raver gamer overweight homosexual disabled Asian Jew women, you insensitive clod!
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WTF does the stock market have to do with the real world?
Serious question: Windows had fanboys?
Yes, they are generally PC gamers who think there is nothing better than Direct X and who may rightfully believe there is no better way to play games than on Windows.
I went to eat some animal crackers and the box said, "Do not eat if seal is broken." I opened the box and sure enough..
Apparently. Of course, it would be nice if they'd named it after what it is...
What the hell is "Data Pilot" supposed to even mean?
I don't understand why Parametric got out of the Unix business, especially with Linux the up-and-comer. Did Microsoft pay them to migrate from OpenGL to DirectX?
I've been thinking long and hard about taking the original Microsoft Natural keyboard (with the front riser) and slapping an Arduino and Bluetooth module on it to make it wireless.
As far as I'm concerned, that keyboard is and was the pinnacle of Microsoft Hardware.
So, aside from . . .
"the huge number of available applications" - OS X has that too
"compatibility with older versions of applications" - OS X has that too
"more polished system management tools for enterprise deployments" - I would tend to agree if you're only looking at it from a Windows enterprise environment. If you are looking at a Mac centric enterprise environment then OS X obviously has more polished system management tools.
"better support for newer hardware" - true, but then again this is an obvious apples to oranges comparison because OS X is not intended to be installed on commodity hardware, but rather on a Mac. I could just as easily say that OS X has better support for Mac minis and be just as true and as misleading.
"for gaming" - Don't game much, but from all I've heard there are a wider variety of titles on Windows. But is this the fault of OS X not being able to play games or just a lower number of third party developers are making games for the Mac?
"the best security record in OSes for the past couple years" - you mean aside from the viruses, zero day exploits, etc., right? This last point is utter bullshit on your part. Win 7 may be better than XP, but it is still swiss cheese in comparison to the ZERO viruses affecting the Mac
"I couldn't possibly see why someone who's informed would choose windows." - Apparently this last point is the only one we agree on. Why WOULD anyone choose Windows?
Call me when you can rationally discuss something instead of being a blind hater.
Apple makes the vast majority of its money, not on the strength of its own products, but the easy availability of product through its iTunes and App Store.
The iPod and iPhone as platforms are nice, but as more and more people use their smartphone as their primary music device, this is going to shrink the market for devices like the iPod. Android phones are going to continue to make their presence felt in the mobile market, and it can't be long before Google decides to sell media for its devices as well, simply because Apple's profits can't be long ignored.
So, Apple will continue to be profitable, but at these levels? Doubtful.
Probably because supporting two platforms is expensive, and if 90% of your user base has a Windows OS on a desktop that has plenty of power, it makes sense to focus on one platform only. In the technical hardware world, Linux/Unix is a real bit player.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
Unlike Dell, they're also quite successful at software and media distribution. And soon, they'll also be successful in mobile ads.
You've never heard of Paul Thurrrott ??
well put
I don't think it's so much "copying" as much as it is "supplying equal-intensity opposition when presented with unsubstantiated apple claims"
Mac user here (and not much of a gamer either). And although I agree with a lot of what you're saying, the quoted bit... not so much. The point is that a gamers don't care whose FAULT it is that the game selection in the world of Mac isn't that great (not being a gamer, I'm taking it on faith that this assertion is true). They care that the games aren't available. So they rationally choose Windows. The fact that it's not Apple's fault that game developers gravitate to Windows is pretty much not even relevant here.
Not so much. I own a late-model G4 Powerbook, which I ended up passing on to my wife. I'd still be using it today, but it can only run 10.5.x... and the latest versions of various bits of the iLife suite require 10.6.x. I suppose technically this is a problem of compatibility with older versions of operating systems, but still. I (am forced to) run Windows at work, and Win XP runs office 2007 just fine, and in fact, I'm not aware of any programs that won't run on XP but do run on Vista/Win 7 - if there are such programs, I haven't had any use for them.
So, the bottom line: I love Macs myself, but it's not like there are no issues in the Mac world. There are some rational use cases for Windows.
With Balmer possibly appearing at the next Apple event, why does this remind me of 1939 Poland, when Hitler and Stalin split it right down the middle. Microsoft owns business, Apple owns the home, and they share the monopoly.
The only thing worse than a Democrat is a Republican.
Windows 7 is a great OS.
It is much better. They fumbled a bit on the 64/32-bit thing, but it's an improvement over Vista.
It is really annoying to have to keep both a 32-bit and 64-bit version of IE in the menubar/dock/quicklaunch thing for incompatible web sites. And worse, you have to paste your own icon in to differentiate them, since MS did not feel like they needed to put a little "32" or "64" on the two otherwise identical applications.
W..w..W - Willy Waterloo washes Warren Wiggins who is washing Waldo Woo.
My sense-o-matic meter just pinned out past 100%
I was in grad school, taking some kind of moderately advanced math (PDE's? can't remember which course). The prof was working through some proof on the board, when it became apparent that he had made a mistake somewhere. I finally pointed at one of the steps and said "I think you lost an i back there. He was about to look at it when some wiseass in the back chimed in with "it's always funny until someone loses an i. Class had to stop for a few minutes until we all finished laughing.
The Microsoft Natural did help my typing and reduce the fatigue. I don't mind it being wired since it rarely moves.
You'll be replaced by Google in 5...4....3....
I hold very few opinions. I hold information based on observation and fact. If you wish to disagree, please use facts.
Its too bad that Apple won based on what consumers think of as "pretty" rather than real values of quality. [...]
"Prettiness" is a fairly pervasive value these days, it is easy to say it's shallow or fake or anything, but I suspect prettiness wins regardless.
"Most people, I think, don't even know what a rootkit is, so why should they care about it?"
No, the parrot really was dead. The seller tried to cover it up by saying he was pining for the fjords. The joke doesn't make sense.
Siemens recently ported UGS NX to OS X, so there's that for CAD/CAM.
Also, a lot of those hipsters you decry do make money too by the way.
If Microsoft were turning the net profits they've been bragging about this last decade - where are they? Were they lost in the accounting? They certainly weren't returned as dividends - the company's dividends have been trivial. So they have a hundred billion in cash they're not reporting to the SEC? That seems unlikely. It seems more likely that these profits were vapor from the beginning.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
That makes no sense. AAPL has been growing like crazy. IBM has not. So you'd rather buy IBM and get a bit of growth and some dividends, over AAPL, which would give you massive growth and no dividends?
You seriously believe that Apple is going to be so profitable that it will be the largest company in the world in a year, and that this rapid growth will continue forever, justifying a market cap never seen before in any company? I believe that's what they call drinking the koolaid. There is a limit to the sales growth that can be achieved in a finite economy. There are growth opportunities that have a fairer price. But if you love Apple, feel free to buy and hold.
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I love how people can't seem to distinguish between IBM and Microsoft.
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