4 ms·

Fun fact, MSFT and AAPL currently have the exact same market cap. The story of Microsoft dying a slow death having missed the boat on internet, cloud and mobile

Fun fact, MSFT and AAPL currently have the exact same market cap. The story of Microsoft dying a slow death having missed the boat on internet, cloud and mobile is like 10+ years out of date. If anything, I'd say the antitrust trial was actually beneficial in the long run. It is a much nimbler company now than it used to be.

nostrademons 6y ago
Nadella brought life back into MSFT, but they were an also-ran from about 2000-2014.
- intended 6y ago
  Credit to Ballmer as well - Nadella took over and pushed many products and changes that Ballmer had started, recognizing that they needed to change. Not that I’m complaining - the surface line revitalized laptop and stylus tech for windows.
- pianoben 6y ago
  You know you _say_ that, but during that timespan their annual net income rose from $5B to $22B, and global revenue for the same timespan from $28B to $86B. Eighty-six billion dollars. Can you really call them an also-ran, or Ballmer an unqualified failure? Yes, they missed the mobile boat and were late to IaaS/PaaS, but to dismiss them for nearly two decades is perhaps unfair. IMO their biggest failure was losing their developer base. DevDiv really seems to have fallen asleep at the wheel - or to have been neutralized by the OS group. [0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/267805/microsofts-global-revenue-since-2002/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/267805/microsofts-global...
  - nostrademons 6y ago
    Innovation is a different skillset from maximizing profits of an existing product portfolio. Ballmer was pretty good at the latter and sucked at the former. With the exception of Azure (which was a little late to the party), the business lines that Ballmer milked were all initially developed under Gates. The biggest years of profitability for most tech companies come after their innovation heyday (when they've already established their market position and no longer reinvest large amounts of cash into new product development), but without continued innovation a tech business eventually fades away into irrelevance.
loudmax 6y ago
And as deeply entrenched as ever in the enterprise work space.
baby 6y ago
That's actually no great for M$ compared to how small Apple used to be compared to them...
- dntbnmpls 6y ago
  To be fair, there was a time when MSFT was small compared to AAPL.
  - bashinator 6y ago
    Are you talking about the early-to-mid '80s, when they were both microscopic compared to anything today? Not really a valid comparison.
    - scarface74 6y ago
      Until 1992. Apple had a larger market cap than Microsoft.
    - dntbnmpls 6y ago
      > Are you talking about the early-to-mid '80s No. Microsoft didn't IPO until 1986. So after the mid 80s to the early 90s. > when they were both microscopic compared to anything today? Well, both apple and microsoft were "microscopic" in the 90s compared to what they are now. But still apple was the star tech company of the 80s and microsoft was the star tech company of the 90s. > Not really a valid comparison. It actually is if we are being honest. But that wasn't my point. Was just pointing out that once Apple was the big success compared to microsoft because microsoft became the big success. But you can cherrypick dates to fit whatever narrative you wish.
wayoutthere 6y ago
Yeah, Azure is huge. There are a lot of companies that see themselves as direct competitors to Amazon and refuse to allow any of their applications to use AWS. Walmart is a huge one with this -- if you want to sell IT services to Walmart, your product cannot run on AWS. They're not the only one either. Azure also kind of just plays better with the whole Active Directory / Office 365 / Sharepoint ecosystem and many Azure products are substantially cheaper than AWS.
- disgruntledphd2 6y ago
  Also, Microsoft have incredibly good enterprise sales, which Google appear to lack, and Amazon have had to build up from scratch.

nostrademons 6y ago

Nadella brought life back into MSFT, but they were an also-ran from about 2000-2014.

intended 6y ago
Credit to Ballmer as well - Nadella took over and pushed many products and changes that Ballmer had started, recognizing that they needed to change. Not that I’m complaining - the surface line revitalized laptop and stylus tech for windows.
pianoben 6y ago
You know you _say_ that, but during that timespan their annual net income rose from $5B to $22B, and global revenue for the same timespan from $28B to $86B. Eighty-six billion dollars. Can you really call them an also-ran, or Ballmer an unqualified failure? Yes, they missed the mobile boat and were late to IaaS/PaaS, but to dismiss them for nearly two decades is perhaps unfair. IMO their biggest failure was losing their developer base. DevDiv really seems to have fallen asleep at the wheel - or to have been neutralized by the OS group. [0]: https://www.statista.com/statistics/267805/microsofts-global-revenue-since-2002/ https://www.statista.com/statistics/267805/microsofts-global...
- nostrademons 6y ago
  Innovation is a different skillset from maximizing profits of an existing product portfolio. Ballmer was pretty good at the latter and sucked at the former. With the exception of Azure (which was a little late to the party), the business lines that Ballmer milked were all initially developed under Gates. The biggest years of profitability for most tech companies come after their innovation heyday (when they've already established their market position and no longer reinvest large amounts of cash into new product development), but without continued innovation a tech business eventually fades away into irrelevance.

loudmax 6y ago

And as deeply entrenched as ever in the enterprise work space.

baby 6y ago

That's actually no great for M$ compared to how small Apple used to be compared to them...

dntbnmpls 6y ago
To be fair, there was a time when MSFT was small compared to AAPL.
- bashinator 6y ago
  Are you talking about the early-to-mid '80s, when they were both microscopic compared to anything today? Not really a valid comparison.
  - scarface74 6y ago
    Until 1992. Apple had a larger market cap than Microsoft.
  - dntbnmpls 6y ago
    > Are you talking about the early-to-mid '80s No. Microsoft didn't IPO until 1986. So after the mid 80s to the early 90s. > when they were both microscopic compared to anything today? Well, both apple and microsoft were "microscopic" in the 90s compared to what they are now. But still apple was the star tech company of the 80s and microsoft was the star tech company of the 90s. > Not really a valid comparison. It actually is if we are being honest. But that wasn't my point. Was just pointing out that once Apple was the big success compared to microsoft because microsoft became the big success. But you can cherrypick dates to fit whatever narrative you wish.

wayoutthere 6y ago

Yeah, Azure is huge. There are a lot of companies that see themselves as direct competitors to Amazon and refuse to allow any of their applications to use AWS. Walmart is a huge one with this -- if you want to sell IT services to Walmart, your product cannot run on AWS. They're not the only one either. Azure also kind of just plays better with the whole Active Directory / Office 365 / Sharepoint ecosystem and many Azure products are substantially cheaper than AWS.

disgruntledphd2 6y ago
Also, Microsoft have incredibly good enterprise sales, which Google appear to lack, and Amazon have had to build up from scratch.