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Apple is Officially Worth More than Microsoft

techcrunch.com

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Re: Apple is Officially Worth More than Microsoft

#81

Post by teyc »

The real question is whether Apple's growth is defensible?

Talking about smart phones, Apple is a latecomer to the industry, and does not have a sufficiently strong patent pool to prevent competitors like Oracle, HP and MS from encroaching.

Apple is the first to deliver to the mass market affordable tablet computing and touch computing devices. This will remain growth areas, and hence Apple's willingness to accept lower margins in return for a beachhead and a sufficiently large user-base to establish itself as a platform-play.

However, further on, Apple is going to have to finely balance the tension of being the most widely used vs being "exclusive", "cool", or "different". Give a few years when competitors reach feature parity, Apple will be at crossroads whether to go mass market or boutique.

Re: Apple is Officially Worth More than Microsoft

#82

Post by tomolope »

TheSOB88 wrote: post #24
jpablo wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll bet facebook has more impact than Apple. Apple makes your iPod, that let's me listen to music. Facebook creates your social life (for a lot of people it does).

I disagree. For me, the only way Facebook helps me socially is as a sort of phone book and with events. Catching up over Facebook seems a useless event compared to conversing IRL. Besides, an inordinate amount of people use it as a game system with a leaderboard. Facebook's value isn't really social at all. It's pseudosocial.

Facebook will get you laid.

Having an iPod.... nope.

An iphone might have done it about 2 years ago.

Re: Apple is Officially Worth More than Microsoft

#83

Post by megablast »

moron4hire wrote: post #8

Consider that Apple's P/E is 24.5 and Microsoft's P/E is 13.4. Basically, while Apple may be in demand right now, Microsoft is earning almost twice as much. Also, Microsoft pays a (albeit small) dividend, whereas Apple does not.

Simply put, the market sees more growth in Apple than they do in Microsoft. Microsoft has been trying to grow for a while now, which since they own such as large share of the OS/Office market, means expanding into new markets.

They have had some success with xbox, but overall they are yet to be in the black there. There is still a chance to grow with the online services. If they can get the xbox positioned as a general entertainment devices in enough peoples homes, but it may be too expensive for that. You have google coming into this space now, and they are going to do things very cheap.

Zune hasn't worked out for them.

They lost there way with Windows Mobile, it seems they just forgot about it, just as they did with IE.

IIS has started to falter, and .Net has seen some great growth, but looks like stagnating now as well.

Whereas Apple have some exciting products coming out, that seem to do very well.

Re: Apple is Officially Worth More than Microsoft

#85

Post by X-Istence »

teyc wrote: post #81

The real question is whether Apple's growth is defensible? Talking about smart phones, Apple is a latecomer to the industry, and does not have a sufficiently strong patent pool to prevent competitors like Oracle, HP and MS from encroaching. Apple is the first to deliver to the mass market affordable tablet computing and touch computing devices. This will remain growth areas, and hence Apple's willingness to accept lo…

I wouldn't necessarily say that Apple doesn't have the patent pool for mobile devices (yes, the smart phone sector included) with Apple doing a lot of innovation in the form of multitouch, OS UI design, usability and a whole other range of other things.

Dismissing Apple outright is definitely the wrong thing to do.

Re: Apple is Officially Worth More than Microsoft

#86

Post by smackfu »

jacquesm wrote: post #47
dflock wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know about the moderation, but what you said is entirely subjective - and quite possibly simply your perceptions of the two companies projected onto their logo's. You could equally well say that the MS logo on that page is elegant, simple and understated, while the Apple logo looks cheap, plasticy and tacky. Either personal opinion would be equally valid, just looking at the two logo's on that page.

Apple has adapted their logo over the years - and their website - to reflect the changing times, microsoft has kept their logo the same for a very long time. Now there is something to be said for keeping your logo the same, possibly forever. But the crowd that apple appeals to and that they intend to sell their gadgets and computers to loves shiny stuff, and apple is very good at making shiny stuff. It stands to reas…

Microsoft keeps a steady logo for the company, and updates the logo for their products. See Windows vs. Vista vs. Windows 7.

Apple doesn't have logos for their products, so they update their company logo instead.

Just different approaches.

Re: Apple is Officially Worth More than Microsoft

#87

Post by [deleted] »

orangecat wrote: post #31
papachito wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Apple's is considered the beginning of things. Who says that? They could be at the top of their game right now and not see more growth and stabilizing and/or decreasing in the future. There is no way to tell, otherwise you'd be very rich already ;) > Stock value today isn't based on today, it's based on "tomorrow". Who says that? Many believe that Apple stocks are overvalued today, that's for sure. Oh, and again, t…

. There is no way to tell, otherwise you'd be very rich already ;) Conversely, the aggregate opinion of investors does has some value. Otherwise you could make a fortune betting against any stocks with high P/E ratios. Many believe that Apple stocks are overvalued today, that's for sure. Sure. And just as many believe it's undervalued, otherwise the current price would be lower than it is. This is true for any stock.

[deleted]

Re: Apple is Officially Worth More than Microsoft

#88

Post by dcurtis »

jedberg wrote: post #13

I think the more interesting news here is that Apple is now the second largest company in America (about $50 billion behind Exxon).

This is kind of pedantic, but I think the word valuable might be better here than largest.

Apple is relatively small when compared to companies like Walmart, which has 2.1 million employees and almost 8x revenue.

Re: Apple is Officially Worth More than Microsoft

#89

Post by whatusername »

ssp wrote: post #77
louislouis wrote: post #70

If APPL, MSFT or GOOG disappeared tomorrow. Which one would cause the least damage? Which one could we live without?

Would everything they ever made disappear too? If so, the loss of Windows and Office would create much more chaos than the loss of Google. The disappearance of all Apple products would not cause that much damage in comparison.

Not to mention Windows Server / MS-SQL.
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