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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

#41

Post by snowwrestler »

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...

Microsoft’s biggest lines of business support knowledge work (Windows, email, Office, MS365, etc) and AI is looking it will provide a nice productivity bump to knowledge workers.

Even just building AI into existing products could help justify price increases, offset on the customer side by higher productivity.

In plain English: AI means companies will need fewer knowledge workers per unit revenue and MS will have a strong claim on some of those additional profits if they are supplying the AI (even if they are reselling OpenAI).

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#42

Post by dataangel »

bmitc wrote: post #20
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 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.

Ignorant question: Does much actually make it out of MS Research? I've seen lots of interesting retrospectives on stuff that either failed or just has never come out of the lab (Singularity/Midori, accessibility demos showing phones reading restaurant menus to the blind, their tablet pre-ipad, etc.) but I don't think I know of anything they made that really grew up off the top of my head.

I didn't want to say this without doing a little bit of homework so I checked their Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_Research) which doesn't list any accomplishments, just claims they have a lot of patents, and their main site has a publication index (https://www.microsoft.com/en-us/research/publications/?) but publication is not a good metric for ever seeing use.

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#43

Post by kgwgk »

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.

> Interesting to see what Wall Street rewards.

It seems to be rewarding Apple? They also had a similar market cap two years ago. Microsoft has seen growth in revenue and net income, Apple has not. Going back to pre-covid times the picture is similar: better financial results for Microsoft but still head-to-head with Apple in market cap.

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#45

Post by seanmcdirmid »

GoToRO wrote: post #31
paxys wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

But oddly enough one of those countries isn't China. Its weird how Google and Facebook can't do much their while everything from Apple works as well as anywhere else.

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#46

Post by speps »

dataangel wrote: post #42
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.

Ignorant question: Does much actually make it out of MS Research? I've seen lots of interesting retrospectives on stuff that either failed or just has never come out of the lab (Singularity/Midori, accessibility demos showing phones reading restaurant menus to the blind, their tablet pre-ipad, etc.) but I don't think I know of anything they made that really grew up off the top of my head. I didn't want to say this wi…

Back in 2014 for the release of Kinect Sports Rivals, the tech to scan people and extract their body details into the right face shapes to match them with a virtual avatar. That came from MS Research Cambridge as far as I know.

Here is a video of it demo'd: https://youtu.be/YKkULaN7J9o

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#47

Post by breadwinner »

dataangel wrote: post #42
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.

Ignorant question: Does much actually make it out of MS Research? I've seen lots of interesting retrospectives on stuff that either failed or just has never come out of the lab (Singularity/Midori, accessibility demos showing phones reading restaurant menus to the blind, their tablet pre-ipad, etc.) but I don't think I know of anything they made that really grew up off the top of my head. I didn't want to say this wi…

> Does much actually make it out of MS Research?

Nope. Microsoft Research has some luminaries such as Leslie Lamport, Christopher Bishop, Xuedong Huang and others, but as far as actual research output that has been commercialized, there is not much to show off.

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#48

Post by scns »

dataangel wrote: post #42
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.

Ignorant question: Does much actually make it out of MS Research? I've seen lots of interesting retrospectives on stuff that either failed or just has never come out of the lab (Singularity/Midori, accessibility demos showing phones reading restaurant menus to the blind, their tablet pre-ipad, etc.) but I don't think I know of anything they made that really grew up off the top of my head. I didn't want to say this wi…

Is Simon Peyton Jones still at Microsoft? He is is at Epic Games now IIRC. Lennart Poettering is there though last i heard.

Re: Microsoft overtakes Apple as most valuable company

#49

Post by dataangel »

scns wrote: post #48
dataangel wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ignorant question: Does much actually make it out of MS Research? I've seen lots of interesting retrospectives on stuff that either failed or just has never come out of the lab (Singularity/Midori, accessibility demos showing phones reading restaurant menus to the blind, their tablet pre-ipad, etc.) but I don't think I know of anything they made that really grew up off the top of my head. I didn't want to say this wi…

Is Simon Peyton Jones still at Microsoft? He is is at Epic Games now IIRC. Lennart Poettering is there though last i heard.

Oh yeah I didn't mean to imply the people there never produce anything that gets widely used in their whole careers, I'm specifically asking if it ever happens while they are at MS Research.
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