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IBM Unseats Microsoft As Second Most Valued Tech Company
First time accepted submitter FlatEric521 writes "The BBC is reporting that for the first time since 1996 IBM's market value has exceeded Microsoft's. The values cap a sustained period in which IBM's share price has moved steadily upward as Microsoft's has generally been in decline. Of course, Apple is still the #1 company by far."
IBM is worth more to the U.S. government then INTEL, Apple, and Microsoft combined.
It doesn't count because they don't own any of Apple at all.
They did purchase $150 million of non-voting stock as part of a court settlement many, many years ago, but they sold it a long time ago.
So IBM will be number 1 soon.
Really though. This isn't news for nerds.
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Why doesn't anyone else take their laptops and add an aluminum case and 50% markup?
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Steve, the legs of that chair sticking through your office window say otherwise.
LoB
"Anyone who stands out in the middle of a road looks like roadkill to me." --Linus
Apple is the largest tech company followed by IBM and Microsoft, if measured by how much the stock market thinks each company is valued at. It is a completely meaningless metric that does not say anything about either company. The stock market is detached from the real world and how well a company's stock is doing is not proportional to how well that company is doing.
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What happened to the last time this happened?
http://news.slashdot.org/story/11/05/22/0232216/ibm-now-officially-worth-more-than-microsoft
I always find this a little absurd. Steve Jobs said it best: "We have to let go of this notion that for Apple to win, Microsoft has to lose." The same basic sentiment goes here. The fact that Apple and IBM are doing better than Microsoft doesn't mean Microsoft is in trouble. They're making more money than ever, despite slashdot predictions of doom and gloom continuing since they made a fraction of what they do now.
That doesn't mean Microsoft isn't in trouble but there's really nothing about "not being the richest in the world" that means "dying".
It's extremely difficult for a major company to sustain its business leadership after its founder leaves. IBM was fortunate they had a son at the helm who was every bit as smart as his father. After the son the company lost its way but then found a new, better path after huge, painful adjustments. That's the exception, though. Apple had a near-death experience losing Steve Jobs, but the founder returned and put Apple back on track. It'll be interesting to see what happens now that Tim Cook is in charge, but we won't know the impact for several years. Likewise, Microsoft has yet to prove it can prosper in its post-founder era, and that experiment has been running a lot longer now. True, Ballmer has been with Microsoft a long time, but he's no Bill Gates, Thomas Watson (Jr. or Sr.), Steve Jobs, or even Lou Gerstner/Sam Palmisano.
And a PC that runs rings around an Apple-branded PC costs about 2k$. Seriously, when I built this computer, I cut a lot of corners, and it was still far higher in every spec than the best Apple had on the market. You're paying easily 30-40% of the price just for it being an iDevice.
"Macs are popular in business"
Graphics, music, and some small forays into movie production (although the real work still happens on Windows and the processing on Linux). Business-business, that being, engineering, finance, healthcare, point of sale, etc, still are Windows or Linux only clubs. For very, very good reason.
Great Intellect...
Numbers I see from www.cnn.com and others show PC sales lagging. Offices have been cutting back on upgrades and using older versions of software. I have not seen a single article stating that sales are actually increasing from MS in a long time. That was true 10 years ago, but not today.
In 2000 and earlier people upgraded WIndows and Office every 2-3 years. Now the standard life cycle is well over 5-7 years with people hanging on to Windows XP for life. The cost accountants in these organizations have noticed and they like it. Windows 3.0 did not have anything near 40% of the market when XP came out, likewise 10 years later 40% still have XP etc. Those numbers say a lot and equal lost sales.
Also please do not count the sales of new pcs as proof that Windows Vista is catching on, when corporations wipe them and use their old Windows XP volume license. Even if you include those numbers desktops and notebooks are on a big decline. The Ipad is part of that reason and so are some smart phones.
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Part of that is that neither IBM nor Apple have been under DoJ supervision for the last decade, which tends to put them at a bit of a competitive advantage when it comes to pushing for growth. MS got slapped for going for other markets beyond Windows and Word. Granted they were going at it in an anti-competitive manner, but MS historically has only known how to grow via those sorts of sleazeball tactics.
That being said, Apple did have the good fortune of having a decade where the DoJ didn't believe in antitrust regulation where they were allowed to engage in questionable tactics to grow their business.
Microsoft and Apple simply didn't exist at the time, so that is an unfair comparison. Knowing that you want to be a fair person, I ask you this... What countries have Microsoft and Apple refused to do business with because of human rights violations?
And the ironic thing is that Microsoft is the chief reason why that happened. They switched to Software Assurance after XP and Office 2003 came out and then, with a steady source of income from people buying in each year, the pressure was off and they took forever to put out Vista and Office 2007. Then of course Vista had horrible performance and there was that whole Vista Ready sticker fiasco. Thus decision makers held off on upgrades, so that by the time Windows 7 came out, companies had already been making do with no changes for half a decade, They had stayed off the upgrade treadmill and the world had not ended.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Calculate the effect of the iPhone 5 being banned from europe vs the next Galaxy phone from Samsung. This battle is raging right now. For Apple, this is a major part of their business, it brings in a lion share of their profit.
For Samsung? They got plenty of other ventures, a block will hurt their bottom line but not in any significant way. Samsung is larger then Apple in many ways BUT not that much larger, it is just far more diversified.
It isn't fair to say Apple if a bubble stock because Apple isn't to blame for how much outsiders are willing to pay for its shares but during the bubble companies with promise were valued over companies with results. Had an ordinary factory turning out a steady profit for several centuries and wanted an investment during the internet bubble? NOT INTERESTED, burning through investor capitol like it was bonfire night, that was the ticket to get the investors piling their cash on the fires.
Apple if of course not doing that at all but what is its value based upon? A very narrow product line that depends on an economic climate in which people are willing to splurge.
Now whether this is a successful strategy depends on what you think the economic crisis is having and going to have. SOME seem to think that ALL people will feel the pain but this hasn't been the case. The crisis has hit hard but Apple is doing very well indeed. The real result of the crisis seems to be that the divide between have's and have not's is increasing. The iPhone buying bankiers got their social wellfare benefits and the factory workers have to sell of their house to pay for it. The rich not only kept their money, they got more of it. More to spend on more gadgets while the poor got less but they already didn't have enough to buy them anyway. So, some will steal them, getting the rich to buy even more...
Meanwhile poor Samsung has to actually pay its employees decent wages and run factory after factory with middle class (No republicans, middle class does NOT include people making 250.000 or more per year) workers...
Valuing Apple high makes more and more sense, since the valuing is done by the rich who got their wellfare check over the working man's back.
Apples stock will only crumble once the poor of America realize that the American Dream is the opiate of the masses and rise up. And that won't happen. Apple got EXACTLY the right business model for the USA. Poor Americans.
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Lacked vision? Who would have thought that people would have been so stupid to buy en-masse the mp3 player with the worse usability among all those on the market? (unless you had a missing arm, that's it) Who would have thought that later people would buy en-masse a phone that was good at everything else but making phone calls? at a premium price and locked down? Come on...
Oh, yeah. They should have bought into Plays For Now, or Zune and they didn't. What fools they are! They should have grasped that brass ring when it was before them, and now they could be enjoying the rapture of Windows Phone's one percent market share. after having sold their soul to the devil to get there like Nokia is doing.
Um, no. Not just no, but Fuck no. Are you fucking kidding? I saw this movie and it doesn't end well. It's a sole survivor flick where even the survivor is tortured.
But it's different now because Microsoft has grown warm and fuzzy.
Fuck you. We've had that story a thousand times, and it's a faustian bargain every time. The devil treats only when it's his advantage to do so. Make a deal with him, and he gets your soul. That's how it works.
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What has Microsoft got to give but a halt to progress to preserve their control? Diddly. Is that enough? Maybe, if we're not watching.
Help stamp out iliturcy.
You're paying easily 30-40% of the price just for it being an iDevice.
You're also paying for it being a little higher in quality than your average cheapest-component-everywhere bargain PC. If you compare the average Mac to a comparable quality brand PC, the difference is much less than your above.
I don't mind paying a premium for something that's worth it, but I hate it how the PC fanboys distort the numbers. Yes, Apple is more expensive. No, the difference isn't 30-40%, that's just ridiculous. You can't compare a product against its cheapest competitor and then claim it's that much more expensive than all its competitors. At least get your math right and use an average. And you can't compare an off-the-shelf product with building one yourself, unless you price in your time as well - what you're doing is comparing a product to the sum price of its components. I'm sure the car you're driving is also a lot more expensive than it would be if you'd bought all the parts and assembled it yourself.
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Yes, everybody is stupid but you. Give me a fucking break, AC, the reason the ipod pretty much created the modern digital music player market because of it's usability, not in spite of it.
Actually, downturn markets are great for companies like Apple, as their success in the last couple years should demonstrate. You see, in times like this, people cannot afford or feel they cannot afford real luxury items: vacations, expensive cars, bigger houses, pools, early retirement, so on. But people still like to treat themselves to a luxury. Apple is right in the sweetspot for this: pretty much everybody with a job can afford an Apple product or two, and they will sacrifice other things to get one just to feel like they have luxuries.
It is called the lipstick principle. You can read about it here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/01/fashion/01SKIN.html?pagewanted=all
is getting away from pure commodity parts. They've been using some of their enormous pile of cash to fund manufacturing processes they like (unibody aluminum) and to fund fab lines in return for first dibs on their output (flash RAM - Apple has a significant fraction of world capacity contracted).
Other manufacturers have had trouble competing on price with Apple lately (which is a switch) because Apple has the best price on parts and processes.
Apple will have its hands full exploiting its current markets for the next year or two, by just making the obvious updates (iPhone with 4G and iPad with retina display, both likely next year), which should buy them enough time to create the next shiny object for our enjoyment.
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