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I'm not too convinced by the relevance of these groupings (GAFA vs Wintel). For one, Intel is a hardware company. And Microsoft seems to do well in a lot of key
by norswap 9y ago
I'm not too convinced by the relevance of these groupings (GAFA vs Wintel). For one, Intel is a hardware company. And Microsoft seems to do well in a lot of key areas.
Also, isn't Oracle on the same scale as the other that are mentioned?
- chinathrow 9y agoApple is also mostly a hardware company.
- empath75 9y agoAll four of them build hardware, to one degree or another and apple designs it’s own chipsets.
- skywhopper 9y agoApple is almost entirely a hardware company, revenue-wise. Microsoft is almost entirely a software company. Amazon is a retail (revenue-wise) and IaaS (profit-wise) company. Facebook and Google are advertising companies.
- skinnymuch 9y agoApple has been aiming for 20% of their revenue to be services. Though really they are mostly tied to their hardware. Much like Microsoft hardware, Surface, which is doing better than I was expecting, is there for their software like you state. And Google's successful ventures like Android and Chrome are there for keeping their data and advertising going.
- foobarchu 9y agoEven if they achieve that, they are still a hardware company, because those services are linked to the vendor lockin they've spent years cultivating. Nobody would use any of their services without the hardware, so they will always be a hardware company in the end.
- skinnymuch 9y agoYeah for sure.
- leggomylibro 9y agoYou could argue that Apple's software, or more specifically its design and user interface, is what really launched it out of the park. Online-connected keyboard phones did exist when the iPhone came out. So they make their money selling hardware, but who would buy that hardware if it weren't for the ecosystem? Their software is pretty shite now - major OSX upgrades have the stability of old Windows ones nowadays - but they still take their users' privacy and security seriously, and they have platform lock-in. Their hardware still isn't what REALLY makes them money.
- warrenm 9y agoApple is a media company that happens to sell phones, tablets, laptops, smart watches, and desktop computers
- away2017throw 9y agoThe dude has interesting thoughts but hates MS and loves Apple to the point of blindness.
- lquist 9y agoAlso, why ignore the Chinese tech giants?
- virmundi 9y agoI'm curious if it's due to a) American-Anglo-Euro centric world view or b) Chinese tech giants are arms of the State, as such hard to compare since they are financed by an authoritarian government.
- skinnymuch 9y agoOracle should have been mentioned. Author certainly seems to have a bias. Can't say he was trying to look at consumer facing companies since Intel never was really that way close to as much as the other five. Oracle probably should've been included.
- mathattack 9y agoI agree. Comparing 4 to 2 survivors to 1 survivor isn't a great comparison. I still think the end conclusion is valid though. As computation and connectivity take a bigger place in the economy, the value of the winners grows.
- warrenm 9y ago"Wintel" was more-or-less the only game in town for 15-20 years And IBM has been around a long time ... it's just they're no longer the only game in town (though I'm a little surprises HP/HPE/MicroFocus/DXC wasn't in there)
- narkie 9y agoI'm glad others picked up the lack of Oracle here. I am guessing by 'leading' the writer means leading household brands in the tech industry.
- bni 9y agoAlso shouldn't Sun have been included, even at the height of Wintel Sun must have made some sort of financial impact, with Sparc servers and J2EE