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Apple is bigger by market cap than Microsoft, Google, Amazon & Facebook combined

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Re: Apple is bigger by market cap than Microsoft, Google, Amazon & Facebook combined

#31

Post by oliwarner »

AngryParsley wrote: post #21
oliwarner wrote: post #12

Can anybody say "bubble"? It's clear to most people Apple isn't worth the money the stock markets assign it - well over half their cap is investment in the brand. If they ever do anything to damage that or if they do something even remotely wrong, a whole lot of people are going to lose a whole lot of money.

Is it really so clear? Anyone who thinks AAPL is overvalued (including you) can make lots of money by shorting or using puts appropriately. People aren't doing that, so they must not be very confident about Apple's stock price decreasing.

You might want to note that I'm not saying Apple is going to implode at 15:02:32, 2nd September, 2012.

I said it depends on Apple doing something wrong and I can't predict when that'll happen or what it'll be but here are some suggestions: Making the iPhone 7 out of cheese or Tim Cook farting in the wrong direction. Either way, if the markets have shown us anything in the past, it doesn't take much at the moment to send traders into sellmageddon mode.

Re: Apple is bigger by market cap than Microsoft, Google, Amazon & Facebook combined

#32

Post by iguana »

jamesjguthrie wrote: post #20
shail wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

first of all I don't think its wise to really say demeaning words about some profession (its the oldest profession and still running many people's house). secondly, there is nothing like an obvious patent, if a patent is defensible then its very much obvious that it wasn't obvious. Remember, Apple hasn't won a case against a small startup. Samsung in itself is a pretty big company and has all the resources to fight A…

How can you actually try to defend prostitution? Would you defend murder and rape too? Both are crimes, both are immoral, both are as old as hills.

There is nothing wrong with prostitution other than the fact that it is illegal in some places. You are employing "the world's worst argument" to try to compare a consensual act between two adults to murder. Proselytize elsewhere.

Re: Apple is bigger by market cap than Microsoft, Google, Amazon & Facebook combined

#33

Post by neya »

andreyf wrote: post #30
neya wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

EDIT: I see nothing innovative with the list of devices you mentioned - 'The new iPad', 'Retina MBP', etc. They are just iterations of previous devices with a higher resolution. The iPad mini is old news, because it is just following the path the Nexus 7 has set. Nothing innovative here. Many talk about fragmentation on Android all the time, just wait and see how much fragmentation, nightmares and hell this Retina re…

Please don't argue like that: http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html

Sorry. Edited my original comment. And thanks for that link.

Re: Apple is bigger by market cap than Microsoft, Google, Amazon & Facebook combined

#34

Post by pwaring »

shail wrote: post #14
pwaring wrote: post #11

Market cap means nothing though. Facebook's size measured this way was bigger than all the publicly listed supermarkets in the UK combined, yet Facebook makes less profit than each of them individually.

I am pretty sure the post would be true if measured on profits, roughly.

No it wouldn't. 2011 profit/net income figures (from the 10-K filings) are:

Apple - $26bn Microsoft - $23bn Google - $9.7bn

So Apple edged past Microsoft in 2011. It is still some way from overtaking all of the companies combined.

Re: Apple is bigger by market cap than Microsoft, Google, Amazon & Facebook combined

#35

Post by [deleted] »

AngryParsley wrote: post #21
oliwarner wrote: post #12

Can anybody say "bubble"? It's clear to most people Apple isn't worth the money the stock markets assign it - well over half their cap is investment in the brand. If they ever do anything to damage that or if they do something even remotely wrong, a whole lot of people are going to lose a whole lot of money.

Is it really so clear? Anyone who thinks AAPL is overvalued (including you) can make lots of money by shorting or using puts appropriately. People aren't doing that, so they must not be very confident about Apple's stock price decreasing.

[deleted]

Re: Apple is bigger by market cap than Microsoft, Google, Amazon & Facebook combined

#36

Post by mmahemoff »

neya wrote: post #4

Seriously, I'm tired of all this BS. What matters for a real company is how they stand to innovate, not how much they make. Right now, Apple's strategy seems to be more of 'litigate' than innovate. What's the use of all this market cap by exercising unfair, unjust monopoly by abusing the patent system with trivial, BS patents? I know a lot of companies that don't make a lot of money but strive for true innovation (Eg…

This brief article very matter-of-factly points out some raw stats about market cap. It never even implied that's what matters.

Talking about a company's market cap doesn't mean money is everything, just as we wouldn't conclude "desktop backgrounds are everything" if the article was about Macbook's desktop backgrounds.

It's not everything. But it's something.

Re: Apple is bigger by market cap than Microsoft, Google, Amazon & Facebook combined

#37

Post by npguy »

oliwarner wrote: post #31
AngryParsley wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it really so clear? Anyone who thinks AAPL is overvalued (including you) can make lots of money by shorting or using puts appropriately. People aren't doing that, so they must not be very confident about Apple's stock price decreasing.

You might want to note that I'm not saying Apple is going to implode at 15:02:32, 2nd September, 2012. I said it depends on Apple doing something wrong and I can't predict when that'll happen or what it'll be but here are some suggestions: Making the iPhone 7 out of cheese or Tim Cook farting in the wrong direction. Either way, if the markets have shown us anything in the past, it doesn't take much at the moment to s…

Purely in valuation terms, Apple stock is in no bubble. AAPL is trading at a P/E of 15.86 GOOG has a P/E of 20.08, for example.

Re: Apple is bigger by market cap than Microsoft, Google, Amazon & Facebook combined

#38

Post by andreyf »

martin_bech wrote: post #15
neya wrote: post #4

Seriously, I'm tired of all this BS. What matters for a real company is how they stand to innovate, not how much they make. Right now, Apple's strategy seems to be more of 'litigate' than innovate. What's the use of all this market cap by exercising unfair, unjust monopoly by abusing the patent system with trivial, BS patents? I know a lot of companies that don't make a lot of money but strive for true innovation (Eg…

Not innovating? This year they've already delivered the new iPad, the retina MacBook Pro, and are set to announce and deliver the iPhone 5, the iPad mini, possibly new iMacs and a TV. And the last five years they created or helped create: The Smartphone market The Tablet market The App market The Locationbased market

In the last decade they've been innovative, yes, but I think your examples from this year are pretty obvious iterative improvements on their current product lines. PG expounded on this once, as well:

I was talking recently to someone who knew Apple well, and I asked him if the people now running the company would be able to keep creating new things the way Apple had under Steve Jobs. His answer was simply "no." I already feared that would be the answer. I asked more to see how he'd qualify it. But he didn't qualify it at all. No, there will be no more great new stuff beyond whatever's currently in the pipeline. Apple's revenues may continue to rise for a long time, but as Microsoft shows, revenue is a lagging indicator in the technology business. [1]

Apple seems to me one of the scariest companies in the industry right now. I predict that although they'll give lip service to "building great products" there simply won't be enough executives who believe it like Steve did, and like the vast majority of corporations of their size, they'll prioritize profits over everything else.

1. http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html

Re: Apple is bigger by market cap than Microsoft, Google, Amazon & Facebook combined

#39

Post by pwaring »

AngryParsley wrote: post #21
oliwarner wrote: post #12

Can anybody say "bubble"? It's clear to most people Apple isn't worth the money the stock markets assign it - well over half their cap is investment in the brand. If they ever do anything to damage that or if they do something even remotely wrong, a whole lot of people are going to lose a whole lot of money.

Is it really so clear? Anyone who thinks AAPL is overvalued (including you) can make lots of money by shorting or using puts appropriately. People aren't doing that, so they must not be very confident about Apple's stock price decreasing.

The problem with shorting is that you can make the right call broadly, but time it wrong. I think AAPL is overvalued, but I don't know when (or even if) the market will come to the same conclusion.

It costs money to keep short positions open - there are several examples of people who exited short positions in the subprime-mortgage bond market just before the credit crunch. They were convinced that the market was going to crash, but they didn't know exactly when.

Re: Apple is bigger by market cap than Microsoft, Google, Amazon & Facebook combined

#40

Post by olalonde »

jamesjguthrie wrote: post #20
shail wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

first of all I don't think its wise to really say demeaning words about some profession (its the oldest profession and still running many people's house). secondly, there is nothing like an obvious patent, if a patent is defensible then its very much obvious that it wasn't obvious. Remember, Apple hasn't won a case against a small startup. Samsung in itself is a pretty big company and has all the resources to fight A…

How can you actually try to defend prostitution? Would you defend murder and rape too? Both are crimes, both are immoral, both are as old as hills.

What is inherently immoral with prostitution? Unlike murder and rape, it is a victimless crime and is in fact legal in many countries.
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