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Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

reuters.com

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Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#31

Post by GoToRO »

paxys wrote: post #25
scottyah wrote: post #10

The main things I see lately are: Apple is creating VR headsets and new chip technology, Microsoft is buying up AI companies and injecting ads/spyware into their operating systems. Also Microsoft is getting big into cloud. Interesting to see what Wall Street rewards.

Microsoft is one of the most diversified companies in existence. Pretty much every business, every government and most consumers around the world are directly or indirectly paying them money for something , whether software, devices, consulting, cloud, data. On the other hand Apple's success for the last 15 years has relied on a single device. Now that the device is running into some issues (dropping sales in China,…

also people don't realize how local Apple is. In a lot of countries you can't even access their services which decreases the value of their devices.

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#32

Post by tiffanyh »

paxys wrote: post #29
tiffanyh wrote: post #28

Bill Gates, at time of IPO owned 49% of Microsoft. If he hadn’t sold his stock, he’d be worth ~$1.5 Trillion To put that into context, he'd be worth 6x Elon Musk (who's the current riches person-in-the-world) https://finance.yahoo.com/news/bill-gates-could-trillionaire... .

But there would be a shit ton more polio in the world, so I'll accept that tradeoff.

Larry Ellison still today owns 42% of Oracle.

What he does instead is take out loans against his stock.

Bill could have done the same and still fund all his philanthropy.

https://www.bloomberg.com/billionaires/profiles/lawrence-j-e....

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#34

Post by bonestamp2 »

bch wrote: post #24
bmitc wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft is much more diversified than that. They have entire consulting services and a world class research arm and many other things that Apple has no analog of.

> world class research arm Honest question: does Wall Street care? In my experience, this is the kind of thing that’s (rightly or wrongly) considered a “cost center”, not a “profit center”.

I think you're right, investors don't really value the research arm until something profitable comes out of it and then they only value that thing that came out of it and not research arm itself.

In some sense, that is the right move. For example, Intel was a market leader for decades while their research arm was very stagnant for many years too. Other times, it is short sighted not to price in what might be to come because you miss buying shares on the cheap before a huge technology/product leap.

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#35

Post by twism »

paxys wrote: post #25
scottyah wrote: post #10

The main things I see lately are: Apple is creating VR headsets and new chip technology, Microsoft is buying up AI companies and injecting ads/spyware into their operating systems. Also Microsoft is getting big into cloud. Interesting to see what Wall Street rewards.

Microsoft is one of the most diversified companies in existence. Pretty much every business, every government and most consumers around the world are directly or indirectly paying them money for something , whether software, devices, consulting, cloud, data. On the other hand Apple's success for the last 15 years has relied on a single device. Now that the device is running into some issues (dropping sales in China,…

i was just thinking i haven't paid MS anything since i got my hands on "VXKC4-2B3YF-W9MFK-QB3DB-9Y7MB"

... then i just got an email receipt from my xbox gold subscription. curses!

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#36

Post by vrc »

riley333 wrote: post #17

Apple just needs to do SOMETHING exciting with AI. Vision Pro looks great, but it's only a small piece of a much larger puzzle. I'm not sure if they're just too big to move at the speed they need to move or if it's something more damning about their internal culture but they need to do something in this space faster than I think most people realize.

I'm just waiting for Siri to reliably set timers when I'm cooking. Between my watch and my phone, it's a damn nightmare to actually do the most basic thing with what should be a ubiquitous AI platform. They've had ages to make it better and some great minds in their employ, and yet they've really not done much. That said, if and when they do, they have immediate distribution and proof points to sell oodles more of their AI-enabled products and wearables...

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#37

Post by foobarian »

paxys wrote: post #21

Microsoft's recent stock gains are obviously due to AI hype and the expected returns from it, but does the company actually have obvious lines of revenue from AI to that degree? Looking at the numbers investors are expecting them to make more from LLMs than they do from products like Windows and Office. I don't want to use the "bubble" word, but...

What about Azure revenues providing access to GPU resources?

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#38

Post by croes »

sho_hn wrote: post #15
scottyah wrote: post #10

The main things I see lately are: Apple is creating VR headsets and new chip technology, Microsoft is buying up AI companies and injecting ads/spyware into their operating systems. Also Microsoft is getting big into cloud. Interesting to see what Wall Street rewards.

Ok, so one of those technologies potentially saves people time and levels the playing field by enabling the use of computers with less special training to achieve equivalent results. The other one aims to strap screens to other people's faces to keep them even longer in a perpetually-online computer bubble of their own choosing, because that's been going great for society so far.

>potentially saves people time

And potentially kills people's jobs, potentially helps spammers and phisher to start larger and better campaigns, potentially increases the amount of fake news, disinformation or just bullshit.

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#39

Post by paxys »

foobarian wrote: post #37
paxys wrote: post #21

Microsoft's recent stock gains are obviously due to AI hype and the expected returns from it, but does the company actually have obvious lines of revenue from AI to that degree? Looking at the numbers investors are expecting them to make more from LLMs than they do from products like Windows and Office. I don't want to use the "bubble" word, but...

What about Azure revenues providing access to GPU resources?

That's all going to NVIDIA.

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#40

Post by mft_ »

vrc wrote: post #36
riley333 wrote: post #17

Apple just needs to do SOMETHING exciting with AI. Vision Pro looks great, but it's only a small piece of a much larger puzzle. I'm not sure if they're just too big to move at the speed they need to move or if it's something more damning about their internal culture but they need to do something in this space faster than I think most people realize.

I'm just waiting for Siri to reliably set timers when I'm cooking. Between my watch and my phone, it's a damn nightmare to actually do the most basic thing with what should be a ubiquitous AI platform. They've had ages to make it better and some great minds in their employ, and yet they've really not done much. That said, if and when they do, they have immediate distribution and proof points to sell oodles more of th…

Funny you raise that, as this is one of the very few tasks that Siri does do reliably for me :)

(Along with just-about-good-enough speech-to-text, if I speak clearly, and checking on the weather outside.)

--

But yes, totally agree with your underlying point about the huge opportunity that Apple is leaving on the table with their lackluster approach to Siri.

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