Apple Now World's Largest Tech Company

3246 Views 29 Replies 14 Participants Last post by Dr.Dave, May 28, 2010

99semaj

Discussion Starter · May 26, 2010

Apple's market capitalization hit $222 billion on Wednesday, leaving it ahead of rival Microsoft as the largest technology company in the world when the closing bell rang on Wall Street.

The dethroning of Microsoft now makes Apple -- for now -- the second largest American company, behind only Exxon-Mobil. Apple has a ways to go to catch the oil giant, which has a market capitalization of nearly $280 billion

While market cap is but a single metric, it's an interesting factoid all the same...

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I wonder how apple with fare without Jobs as well. He has put together quite a number of successful ventures - Apple (twice), Pixar, Next. He sold his vw van and convinced Wozniak to quit his job to start apple computers. Built on the success of the apple ][ went on to release the Mac. Left or was forced out of apple he started next which pioneered stuff like graphical email, wysiwyg programming which TBL used to invent the world wide web. Bought pixar from Lucas and turned that into CG animation powerhouse that Disney eventually bought making Jobs the largest single share holder of Disney. Comes back to apple and borrows 150 million dollars from Microsoft and then has one hit after another - iMac, OSX, iPod, iTunes, iPhone and now the iPad.

Don't know of any other person out there that has had so much success like this.

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hkaye

· #19 · May 27, 2010

I actually was thinking of Thomas Edison today, comparing him to Jobs.

I also thought a great comparison would be comparing Henry Ford to Bill Gates. Ford brought the car to the masses while Gates made it possible for everyone to have a personal computer with first DOS then Windows.

Living in a time to see two big industry tycoons is certainly a treat.

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Not that it really matters but the revenue/ net income numbers for AAPL posted in this thread are incorrect.

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hkaye

· #23 · May 28, 2010

As I said, not that it really matters, but if you can read the accounting blah blah they filed in Q1 of 2010 they have a new 'magical' accounting principles. They also have revised the income statements for the past years to reflect these new accounting principles. I have no idea how this all works, but apparently it significantly changes the numbers (as in billions of dollars in changes) they report for revenue/net income.

http://www.apple.com/investor/

You can see the difference the new accounting makes by looking at the quarterly reports on market watch

http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/aapl/financials/income/quarter

The numbers for net income almost double. It's not because they sold that much more, but just the way the accounting is now done. It's not that much of a leap to speculate next years annual numbers will almost match microsofts revenue/ net income

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hkaye

· #24 · May 28, 2010

The first cars were very much like the first computers!

Thanks for the video, that was a fun watch

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hkaye

· #25 · May 28, 2010

I found a good article explaining (well it explains it a lot better than the blah blah in Apple's Q1 report for me

) the accounting changes Apple made and why they had to declare their revenue using subscription accounting.

http://www.appleinsider.com/article...s_iphone_subscription_accounting_changes.html

Interesting read. An odd occurrence where a new law was supposed to prevent companies like Enron over inflating their revenue worked in reverse for Apple where they had to 'under report' their revenue.

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hkaye

· #29 · May 28, 2010

what saved Apple was the marketing campaign that convinced everyone that paying a premium for a device made them somehow cool, hip, and better than everyone else

My first Mac was the 'lamp shade' 800Mhz G4. I bought it because it looked cool. And well, I wanted to be cool and have a cool computer.

I pulled it out of the box, plugged it in and was surfing the net in less than 5 minutes. Easiest computer to get on my wifi network ever.

Just starting using the Mac more and more over my other Windows/Linux computers until I was using it 100% of time. I got carried away and started buying cinema displays, ipods, PowerBooks, nothing could stop me from pressing that damn 'Buy it Now' button on apple's website.

So in essence, what you say is partly true, except I always thought I was better than everyone else before I bought my first iMac

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