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 …
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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