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Microsoft passes Apple to become the most valuable company
- kayodelycaon 5y ago> iPhone sales at the company were up 47% year-over-year but also fell short of analyst expectations. I can't think of anything to say in response to this... Edit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hedonic_treadmill
- merpnderp 5y agoApple had supply chain shortages leaving them unable to meet expected (and actual) demand. Like what happened with Dominos, only in this case people were left waiting on phones instead of pizza.
- ISL 5y ago"Analyst expectations" in this context means something perhaps different than how it might readily be interpreted. In this context, analysts attempt to estimate what sales will be. If analysts had estimated that Apple probably would report sales 49% greater than last year, but Apple reported 47%, the quoted phrase would appear in financial-news articles. "Analyst expectations" are not expectations in the sense of a parent's potential expectations of their child, but rather their best guess as to what is going to happen.
- zzbzq 5y agoi don't understand what else it could mean other than 47% is less than the number projected by analysts
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- ncallaway 5y agoGoogle provides two definitions for "expectation" (a) a strong belief that something will happen or be the case in the future. (b) a belief that someone will or should achieve something. The first is a descriptive expectation. A statement about what you think _will be_. The second is a prescriptive expectation. A statement about what you think _should be_. I think the person is trying to point out that in this context, "expectation" is a descriptive expectation, rather than a prescriptive one. If you interpreted it as a prescriptive expectation the other meaning of the sentence might be something like "47% is less than the number _desired_ by analysts"
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- crate_barre 5y agoThey’ve been on the mark with earnings all year, I just think the market is tepid about getting Apple to the 3 trillion mark since it won’t have anywhere else to run after that. Tin-foil hat me thinks market makers are just toying with the options contracts that anticipate that valuation (killing options that are getting in too early). Just hold shares on this.
- spywaregorilla 5y agoThe market doesn't wait around and say "wow 47%, that stock should go up now", it says "I think it'll be 48%" and the stock goes up in advance.
- wutbrodo 5y agoThis has nothing to do with the hedonic treadmill. The market already priced in a higher guess for iPhone sales growth, and is adjusting downwards to fit the actual numbers. If you want to fit it into the frame of hedonic expectations, the hedonic equivalent would be ordering and paying for a filet mignon and getting an In N' Out Double-Double. Still delicious, but not what you paid for/expected. The hedonic treadmill has no relation to this concept.
- paxys 5y agoReplacing Ballmer with Nadella was possibly the best move a company's board of directors & shareholders have made in the history of corporate governance
- short12 5y agoBalmer doesn't get enough credit but he was exactly what was needed during that pretty long timeframe. But nadella taking it from there was an equally good decision I think balmer got to be the fall guy for a lot of things and that was why he was put in as CEO
- reducesuffering 5y agoHow do you explain Balmer deriding the iPhone and completely failing to pivot into mobile?
- missedthecue 5y agoYou win some you lose some. It's perfectly possible that any Microsoft phone product would have been doomed, whether it was executed under Nadella, Gates, or anyone else. Ballmer did start Azure though, which is basically carrying Microsoft today. Their Surface product was also released under Ballmer's direction.
- devnull3 5y ago> Ballmer did start Azure though This is analogous to Xerox experimenting with GUI and not really believing in it. No real drive, no zeal. Satya doubled down on it. Made it priority 1 and most importantly executed it well. Ballmer's world view was completely different which was more rooted in 90s and early 2000s. He was more of Windows guy and not really seeing the changing trends. That is why MSFT's foray into mobile looked like an after thought.
- short12 5y agoOf course he is going to belittle another company's achievement but Microsoft had zero chance in the mobile game in the first place and they knew it Saying the windows phone was half assed is being generous
- endisneigh 5y agoMuch of Microsoft's growth is Azure, but I wonder how long it can keep up. I imagine at some point in the future (perhaps by 2030) there will be some sort of self-managing set of systems that you can just put on your premises. There's just too much money to be made for that not to be the case. Infrastructure is hard, but operations are becoming more and more streamlined.
- chokolad 5y agoUnless I misunderstand you those things already exist. https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/overview/azure-stack/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/overview/azure-stack/
- toast0 5y ago> I imagine at some point in the future (perhaps by 2030) there will be some sort of self-managing set of systems that you can just put on your premises. That's not really the direction Microsoft is going in. Cloud PC (virtual desktop infrastructure) is an Azure only service; there's no on-prem version. Licensing to build it yourself is complex. They may likely end up with on-prem islands for purchase/rent/whatever, like AWS has, and IBM pioneered in the 60s?
- nlawalker 5y agoSee https://azure.microsoft.com/overview/azure-stack https://azure.microsoft.com/overview/azure-stack, and particularly https://azure.microsoft.com/products/azure-stack/hub https://azure.microsoft.com/products/azure-stack/hub. "Bringing the agility and innovation of cloud computing to your on-premises environment."
- ArtTimeInvestor 5y agoI find it increasingly hard to form an investment thesis around big tech companies like Microsoft, Apple and Alphabet. Mostly because the CEOs all seem so similar. Every time I listen to investor calls of one of them, they are all like "We are proud that we have built tons of great stuff and are excited to build more amazing great stuff.". I do not see any big bets or different approaches that differentiate the companies. Can you guys tell me why you would rather invest in one of the big tech companies than the other?
- laurent92 5y agoAtlassian! Don’t miss Atlassian. It went up from $120 to $180 during Covid. Wait, $230, no, 320, today $483! Disclosure: I own shares. I’ve paid them less than $30. I knew Atlassian was excellently managed, but I didn’t imagine it would climb this high. I’m surprised it always goes silent next to GAFAM.
- bigtones 5y agoSure, if your thesis is that all the worlds corporate server computing is migrating away from company owned and operated data centers and into cloud computing providers over the next decade, then you would invest in Amazon (AWS) or Microsoft (Azure). If you made that investment decision 5 years ago you would have tripled your money already.
- ArtTimeInvestor 5y agoThat is indeed one of my thesis. But how does it not apply to Google? They run datacenters too.
- capableweb 5y agoNo, they are all the same and you'll do best by splitting your investment equally among the ones you're considering.
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- HenryKissinger 5y agoReminder that market capitalization is only: (number of shares)×(share price) It's kinda crazy to think that Bill Gates would be a trillionaire if he never sold a share.
- jaywalk 5y agoIt's crazy to think that Microsoft would be where it is today if Bill Gates never sold a share, because it wouldn't.
- sailingparrot 5y agoOP is likely talking about not selling a share after the IPO. Gates had 45% of Microsoft back then.
- jaywalk 5y agoAzure is still growing like crazy. I really hope Apple stays in their lane and doesn't start making forays into "enterprise" to spur growth.
- thefourthchime 5y agoI just can't see it. If they do "step out of their lane". I bet it's more in search. They've been slowly trying to ungoogle the Apple experience for a while and I wouldn't be shocked if they eventually do a search engine.
- gigglesupstairs 5y agoI am surprised they haven’t done that yet. With all their feistiness against Google in last few years, this seems like a very logical next step.
- exhilaration 5y agoGoogle pays Apple $15 billion for that privilege. That's a lot of money for even Apple to give up. https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/25/analysts-google-to-pay-apple-15-billion-to-remain-default-safari-search-engine-in-2021/ https://9to5mac.com/2021/08/25/analysts-google-to-pay-apple-...
- jandrese 5y agoOne could imagine Apple starting a datacenter that is populated entirely with their M-series chips and their stupendous power efficiency. Current Apple isn't the kind of company that would do this, but it's not that hard to imagine. Ultimately Apple still prefers to be a hardware company, even their software or services efforts are mostly to encourage people to buy their hardware.
- throwaway4good 5y agoI always thought that Apple in the server or cloud business has a lot of potential. Imagine a data center version of the m1 chip.
- throwaway4good 5y agoIsn’t Apple making considerable more money than Microsoft? Is it about potential or something?
- sailingparrot 5y agoYou are thinking about revenue. Indeed Apple revenue is much higher, But it also costs them much more to produce those goods. So at the end of the day, Microsoft is actually taking home slightly more money with a net income of 60B$ for 2020 vs 57B$ for Apple.
- pleb_nz 5y agoThis also happened in 2019 as we well. These two companies have been trading places as most valuable company for a while now. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2019/07/19/microsoft-extends-lead-worlds-valuable-company-record-profits/ https://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/2019/07/19/microsoft-...
- mrkramer 5y agoImagine if Microsoft made Android not Google, add another trillion on top of Microsoft's market cap.