Apple worth more than Microsoft and Intel combined
Let historians note that on Friday, June 3, 2011, Apple surpassed the market capitalization of Microsoft and Intel combined. This milestone comes to us courtesy of MacDailyNews, which notes that as of the close of Friday's markets, Microsoft's market cap was $201.59bn and Intel's was $115.21bn, putting the combined value of the …
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Same old song
Somebody already mentioned it but it's true that a lot of the articles cited in Rik's story were published pre Apple-Intel shift. Before that happened in '06 Apple looked like they were struggling to compete in terms of processing power, tdp etc.
Obviously if you have a level playing field using the same parts as your competitors and you choose to go down the premium route, there will be people willing to buy.
Time for tech people everywhere to call it like you see it. An Apple PC is exactly that - it's wrapped up in a pretty package but at it's core are all components you could easily buy and assemble for yourself. The only thing that seperates it from the rest is the mac os. Apple on their own website state OS X is "what makes a mac a mac". Which in this era of hackintoshes must make my pc a mac.
Now that we've dealt with that side of it, can we address why this 'gloating' is heavily centered towards those who predicted that mac+os x share wasn't going anywhere and if it was it was going down? In fairness to all concerned we can at least admit that a large chunk of that $317.6 billion is not the result of mac sales. Seems to me that the turning point for Apple was when the great unwashed were allowed to get their hands on Apple tech. A mac/macbook might be well out of their budget - or even a mac mini (worthless compared to the spec + upgradability of an equivalent priced desktop pc) but they can afford to buy a ipod/iphone on contract/ipad and they can afford to get it now. Microsoft have totally missed this 'essential' life gadgets market so kudos to Apple for this revenue stream, but the comparisson in market caps is bogus.
Anyway, enjoy your time in the sun fanbois - eventually prices will be such that macs will be in the hands of virtually everyone and then you will just be 'one of us'. Then the only flame wars will be between 'us' and 'them' (the few soldiers of the linux hold-out resistance.)
Stock overpriced
I own apple kit, but I wouldn't charaterise myself as a fanboy (I think jobs is a douche).
Given the assets owned, and product produced by both MS and Intel when compared to Apple just seem to prove the old adage that the stock market isn't about valuing companies, it's just a fancy popularity poll.
Here we go, another stock market "expert"
You'd think that the whole thing was run by a bunch of amateurs using a dart board to price stocks the way that they go on. Stock prices are set based on current earnings and expected future earnings potential combined (and there's lots of smart people and computer power looking for over and under valued stock). You'd expect to see an averagely performing company have a price/earnings (PE) ratio of between 10 and 17 (lower is underpriced, higher is overpriced). Historically the average for the last 100 years has been 14. Looking at a quick sample of companies from the Dow Jones:-
Boing: PE 18.1
Cisco: PE 11.6
Coca Cola: 17.0
GE: 13.9
Home Depot: 15.0
IBM: 12.5
Verizon: 16.1
Walmart: 12.0
Apple? 13.9 EXACTLY where you'd expect to find them right in the middle of the pack, and not due to a one-off sale of some asset or other.
@ Steve
I may be mistaken, but I beleive i was paraphrasing Warren Buffet in my original post. You know, the guy who bought made a little fortune from buying companies who's market cap was less then the combined assets owned by the business.
@ Chad
Paraphrase Warren Buffet all you want, doesn't make you less wrong!
wtf?
Ummm... Why should consumers care if their tech company has a higher market capitolization? All that number really reflects is how much they are gouging you on the price. Non-shareholder consumers should actually be pissed about this. It means they are charging you "too much".
wtf
Well that article was pretty much pure gibberish, the ipad has done nothing to the pc market...its a completely different bit of hardware designed purely for consumption.
"designed purely for consumption."
Oh do behave. What the fuck indeed! That is utter bollocks and you know it.
valued at and worth
Appl€ might be valued more, but it certainly isn't worth more. This fashion bubble created by iPhone owning traders will burst soon.
It's also more of an illustration of how much all these saddos who think that they're "living the Appl€ lifestyle" are being exploited by a giant mega-corporation.
Apple's cash pile must be a great comfort to them.
After all their magical new strategy of "if it moves, patent it or sue it" must be costing them an absolute fortune, lawyers being what they are.
.
Spy vs Spy
Apple's moment of genius was in realising it couldn't beat Microsoft and Intel at their own game. The overwhelming majority of proper computers currently run Windows, will still be running Windows in ten years time and may still be running Windows at the turn of the next millennium. The same is true of servers. Both will also be using Intel architecture for the foreseeable future - in fact, Apple now pay lots of money to Intel, an idea that would have been ridiculed by Mac fanbois just ten years ago.
No, the real fight of the 21st century has been between Sony and Apple... and Sony have had their butts well and truly kicked.
Now that the battle with Sony has been won, Apple face their biggest opponent yet: Samsung. Samsung is a global behemoth - one of the world's biggest conglomerates, its electronics arm has a revenue twice that of Apple and it's breaking into areas where Apple have been making most of their money. The Samsung Galaxy S is currently outselling the iPhone 4 in the UK and the eagerly awaited new Galaxy Tab is shaping up to be the first serious competitor to the iPad.
Whether the American corporation can hold out against Samsung and other competitors is a serious question. Apple have so far been playing the role of the plucky underdog, but now they are one of the big players. Unfettered growth can no longer be expected and the maintaining of market share is now what Apple need to focus on. Will the iPhone 5 and iPad 3 be able to hold their own against the next generation of Samsung, HTC, Blackberry, Nokia etc etc products? The early teasers of Windows 8 suggest another big ground-shift in mobile computing with the hybridisation of mobile and traditional OSes - a one-size-fits-all OS that will allow seamless transition between PC, tablet and smartphone. Google's Chrome OS promises a cloud-based seamless experience which should offer PC level computing on tablet hardware, thus cutting the cost of hardware well beneath that of both Apple and MS computers. It's no longer enough for Apple to focus on leading the way. The lack of innovation in the iPhone 3G S and the iPhone 4 has shown that Apple's dynamic edge has suffered under a desire to diversify - there's only so much creativity to go round at Apple, and perhaps their sales and revenue figures have grown faster then their product development base can support in the long run.
@Watashi re. Spy versus spy.
Very interesting post. It is perhaps indicative of the situation that Apple now find themselves in that they have become unusually keen on reaching for their lawyers. Whether it is patenting *very* generalised concepts designed to do little more than plant a series of legal minefields all over the mobile communications market space or picking quarrels with the others amongst the big boys like, of course, Samsung. When a company's reaction to challenging circumstances is to try and control the market by brute muscle (Microsoft and Intel in the nineties) or by a whole series of what can only be described as vexatious misuses of the patent system (Apple amongst others today), that is a company that is losing its way/confidence when it comes to innovation and leading the market.
Remember this?
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2006/12/23/iphone_will_fail/page2.html
Perhaps Apple do know what CONSUMERS want. That's why they make money.
Maybe we should all stop chucking vitriol and just use what suits our personal taste.
Market Cap is not everything
Market Cap is great but market share is what matters, Apple is still operating in Niches as it always has since the days of DTP. OK I'll grant you that the technophobic is a big niche but it is still not a patch on Windows. The other factor missed in the article is GOOGLE, Apple is facing serious competition in all its markets and is beginning to feel it. The difference is that ist competitors won't lock people in, force them to use iTunes and bleed them dry. Apple was on the brink of going bust, it was Microsoft that saved it, they must have wished they hadn't.
Overpriced?
Before saying that Apple products are overpriced do take into account the retained value. How much is that Dell laptop that bought two years ago worth now?
You just don't get it.
This is exactly what we say. Apple's hardware is not valued by its inner qualities but from the hype around the brand. For it is a regular middle range pc inside. And has no other value whatsoever.
A 3 years old MacBook is about as powerful as my 3 years old Toshiba, but i paid it about 3 times less (400 euros, stuffed with same level hardware).
And i actually KNOW they are about as powerful for running on both CPU intensive (integers and floating points) scientific calculations for hours.
It took 24 064 seconds for the cheapo PC,
and 25 251 for the pricy Mac.
Cheers.
Who wants a fight?
BBC Micros are far better than C64's or Spectrums - discuss...
Who will win in the next ten years? I wouldn't be surprised if that both Apple and MS will be joining the ranks of the past.
Why is Apple the tech equvalent of Marmite?
I still want to know what is it about Apple kit that gets right up the nose of Windows people and too a lesser extent the Linux/BSD crowd? I am not talking about the stereotypical image of a Mac buyer, all West-coast attitude, GAP khaki's and buying into the BS spewed by the Apple ad-men , but what is it about the actual products makes Apple like the desktop equivalent of Marmite, setting brother against brother, spouse against spouse?!
Answers on a postcard please!
tab bit expensive
its rather expensive for what you get, especially if you dont care about the design and looks of stuff. Other then that, nothing. I have used/use all 3 OS's(windows, linux, OSX).
And to be honest, some of the Mac owners I have met are the most annoying people that are not capable to accept the fact that there could be a flaw in a mac product. The mac owners group seems to have a larger % of idiots like that compared to other OS's.
Who cares
MS are king. Apple is king, Linux is King,......
Jeez people, they are just operating systems and you lot are acting like these are your babies.
Then again, for many of you the only experience of sex you will ever have is with your computers. ;-)
Just remember, whichever OS camp you are in, what goes up MUST come down and NOTHING lasts forever.
Rhoobarb
You've got us wrong Bug_Boomer. The commentards enjoy a good rhoobarb. We start the week with some gentle iOS/Android, graduate through Linux/MS and by Friday we are ready for the ultimate Amstrad 464/BBC B/Amiga foam-flecked smackdown.
The beast vanquished?
The fire isn't out until the ashes are cold and dead.
One word
Bubble
OK, a few more. Let me know when the major pension funds get involved in Apple stock. Then Apple will have arrived.
major funds?
like Fidelity perhaps? (biggest investor 18billion stake)
State Street? (12billion)
or maybe Vanguard? (12 billion)
71% of Apple shares are held by institutional investors, compared to 63% of Intel, 64% MS, 62% oracle etc.
What about CALPERS, biggest single pension fund in the USA?
They own 860mil$ of APPL, 624mil$ of MSFT, 330mil$ of Intel.
I could probably get more hard data proving the point but I've wasted 5 minutes already
l2google!
Market Cap is not a fair measure of company size
Market cap is simply a measure of what shareholders value a company at.
Unfortunately a comparison of Apple shares vs Microsoft and Intel shares isn't exactly fair as there is a key difference between them: Apple does not pay dividends.
For shareholder return on investment, they can only sell for a profit, which drives the share price up. As Apple is the golden boy of the market, prices will remain high, and people will continue to drive up share prices. But this means Apple's valuation is artificially high.
For a better indication of company size, try looking at equity (total assets minus liabilities). Apple may have a wickedly high market capitalization, but it has a smaller equity than Intel.
@Market Cap is not a fair measure of company size
You didn't read the earlier post about PE ratios did you?
But what are they really worth
Is it just me or is everyone missing one massive point here, Apple have NEVER paid a dividend so unless you are speculativly trading on those shares then they are worthless.
$343.48
at the moment.
They are worth what someone will buy them for. That's generally what worth means.
iRony
How funny then, that Bill Gates is richer than Steve Jobs and that Apple are only still with us because Microsoft bailed the company out to the tune of $150M US http://www.nytimes.com/1997/08/08/opinion/the-apple-of-microsoft-s-eye.html back in 1997.
(here in glorious (OK, YouTube) TechniColor http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WxOp5mBY9IY )
Who won?
Really sums up Church of Jobs rather well.
Gates didn't bail Apple out
They made peace. Apple had been at war with MS since the Windows look and feel lawsuit which MS won in 1994. The bad blood between the two was extreme, with MS subsequently letting the Mac version of office go to seed and Apple joining Netscape and friends in complaining about MS' behaviour to the DoJ.
By 1997 this was a serious problem for MS, the DoJ was getting heavier and heavier, a full prosecution under the auspices of the Sherman act was only months away, and MS realized that the one thing that they couldn't afford was for Apple to be bleeding all over the court with Bill Gates' fingerprints on the knife. Jobs had returned a few months earlier and was looking for some big splashy PR, and so the two firms negotiated a peace.
As part of a deal where Apple would drop all lingering legal complaints against MS and they would cross license patents, MS promised to properly support the platform, and to invest 150mil. If anything saved Apple it was the application support rather than the 150mil.
Insulted AMD not even included
AMD rocks they should have got mentioned!
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