7 ms·
Are MSFT and Apple safest faangs rn?
by hardware2win 4y ago
Are MSFT and Apple safest faangs rn?
- tootie 4y agoDid you look at the graphic? Google and Meta no longer have a stranglehold on the market, but the market is also bigger than ever. 70% of the ad market in 2022 is worth more than 90% was in 2012.
- Q6T46nT668w6i3m 4y agoYes, but I don’t think there’s been a moment where they were not the safest.
- SkyMarshal 4y agoWell except for when Apple lost most of their market share and almost went bankrupt.
- deepstack 4y agoYup there were even Mac clones then, MS actually came in saved Apple at one point.
- samwillis 4y agoThat was very much pre FAANG as a construct. Apple, since it’s second coming, has never be in an unsafe position.
- ThrowawayR2 4y agoApple is focused on consumer products and consumers can be fickle. While it won't be anytime soon, it's not impossible for Apple to someday lose the design mojo that makes their products popular. Steve Jobs and his RDF aren't there anymore and neither is Jony Ive.
- scarface74 4y agoCreating hardware at scale is hard. What company do you think will be able to duplicate Apple’s infrastructure, manufacturing, chip design, retail, etc? Not to mention that even with “great design” any Android phone is still stuck with being Android and the lack of integration between software, hardware and ecosystem.
- ThrowawayR2 4y agoFoxconn is the most prominent contract manufacturer that Apple uses, Samsung makes iPhone screens, etc.; their infrastructure and manufacturing pipeline is the same as everyone else's. And suggesting that Apple's leadership in processor design can't be toppled is akin to saying that Intel's leadership in chip design can't be toppled back in the several decades when they were dominant. It's the design and ecosystem that keeps consumers buying Apple product but what used to be seen as cool and hip can turn old-fashioned after a while; Sony's Walkman products used to be everywhere but where are they now?
- scarface74 4y agoYou’re not going to get the same prices or priorities from Foxconn or TSMC with a less than 10 million device run rate that Apple gets by selling 300 million + devices. Besides Apple invest billions in TSMC and Foxconn and their other suppliers. Do you remember that Apple became dominant in the iPod era by buying up all of the worlds supply of 2.5 inch hard drives and later flash chips? Anyone else is going to struggle to get the prices or manufacturing time from suppliers to produce at scale. Heck Sony is struggling to make even 21 million PS5 in a year. If Sony can’t manufacture at scale, which electronic manufacturer can? It’s not just priced for design, it’s processor design, supply chain management, software, software/hardware integration etc.
- screye 4y agoFacebook and social media companies rely on viral phenomena to sustain their monopoly. It will take 1 inciting event for them to fall into an irreversible death spiral. The instagram + whatsapp acquisition, feeling threatened by 100x smaller dev shops demonstrates that. Google's big advantage is that their core product has fundamental value (search and by proxy: ads) and their secondary products are such loss-leaders that outcompeting those freebies (Google office suite, Gmail, maps, YT, chrome, ml tooling) is where the real difficulty comes in. But building a core-search competitor is far easier than competition with Apple or Msft's core products. Google has a lot more scaffolding that FB, but they too have a single point of failure. A sea-change (like Mapreduce, pagerank, the smartphone) can see them collapse swiftly. On the other hand, enterprise / feature-checklist companies lie in a stable equilibrium. You can't really beat them unless you invest a similar amount of resources into it. And even if you defeat them, they'll catch up to you in time if they're run at similar levels of competency and can throw a ton money money at it. Microsoft and Apple are exactly that. It's like trying to start a Boeing or Nvidia competitor. You better at least be at Airbus's or AMD's level before even trying to compete against boeing. Microsoft's weakness is best displayed by Adpbe's acquisition of Figma. If Microsoft is run in a similarly predatory manner and a competitor gets 10 free years to catch up on 1 feature while you continuously fail to innovate, then you feel a mild threat, at which point you can simply outbid and acquire them. That shows how remarkably comfortable of a position Adobe is in, and Microsft and Apple sit a couple of orders of magnitude above that.
- VirusNewbie 4y agoI’m fairly certain gmail, youtube, and gsuite on their own would be unicorns still.
- IceWreck 4y agoYoutube wouldve never grown to that size without Googe's money. It wouldve inevitably shut down or made huge changes to their model. Gmail, yes it would be huge without google but its only so bug because google forced it down everyone's throats with mandatory google accounts for android, maps, youtube, drive, etc. GSuite again this would never be s big without google's backing. Just look at its non MS competitors.
- bradleyjg 4y agoMicrosoft is reliant on Azure for growth. Although cloud initiatives are designed to save money in the long run, in the short run they cost money. If we go into a strong recession than at the least I would expect Azure to do worse than projected. Likewise, Apple sells luxury goods. If I had to bet on one FAAMNG in a sharp recession it would be Amazon. They have the most diversified revenue streams.
- scarface74 4y agoThis could only come from someone who doesn’t understand the enterprise. How is a luxury good affordable by over 50% of the US market?
- bradleyjg 4y agoWhat percentage of the US market has a piece of jewelry? If that’s above 50% is jewelry a staple good instead of a luxury good?
- scarface74 4y agoWhy would jewelry necessarily be a “luxury” of many people can buy it?
- bee_rider 4y agoFAANG is kind of a weird classification: 4 web companies, 2 of which are primarily ad companies... and then Apple, a devices company with real low-level chops. Why don't we put Apple in with somebody like: MAIA -- Microsoft, Apple, Intel, AMD. Maybe add NVIDIA, you have to work out a good acronym though.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- classified 4y ago> a good acronym MANIA
- bee_rider 4y agoAh wow, that's better than the Lord of the Rings reference.
- scarface74 4y agoIntel and AMD are no longer dominant.
- bee_rider 4y agoWell, it depends on how you want to define "dominant" (in which markets, by what metrics) and to be honest the ambiguous opener has not reeled me in.
- scarface74 4y agoIntel market cap is 120B. Apple, Microsoft, Google and Amazon are all worth more than a trillion. TSMCs market cap is 4x Intel’s and produces far more processors and has a more advanced manufacturing process.
- bergenty 4y agoGoog and Facebook are still safe as hell. Even if you think Facebook is waning, is going tk be hard to dislodge WhatsApp and instagram and I don’t really think Facebook is going away.
- doktorhladnjak 4y agoThose companies aren't going away any time soon. Heck, IBM, Cisco, Hewlett Packard are all still around, and all still making profits. Doesn't mean they're desirable places to work at all compared to the olden days.
- int_19h 4y agoIt's not just the market; there are also potential legislative threats. Facebook would surely be the first on any such chopping block.
- scarface74 4y agoApple, Amazon and Microsoft. They have real hard to reproduce infrastructure.