You’re having lots of fun posting your links and praising Apple, and talking them up.
But, none of your links can dispute the fact that, Microsoft was the biggest corporation ever, much bigger than Apple is now.
Heck Microsoft is still a lot more relevant than Apple when it comes to penetration into the consumer and business marketplaces. Apple has a lot of sale of one thing: iPhones, but, Microsoft is much more relevant in a lot more areas.
Apple will get downsized very quickly once the iPhone loses its appeal, and Apple doesn’t really have another product with which to prevent the slide.
Microsoft haa at least 16 products and services that each earn at least 1 billlion dollars per quarter. Those are guarantees that, MS will survive any downturn in the economy, and in any one product area. Essentially, MS has developed a bullet-proof series of products and services, while Apple has to worry about iPhones losing their appeal. In any business, it’s much better to diversify and have many areas of growth; Apple is not that kind of company.
Nobody denies that Apple has fantastic earnings and a very big market cap. A market cap is not going to prevent iPhones from losing their appeal. Apple could use the investors’ money to purchase a lot of smaller companies to prevent dependency upon one product. But,it would signify panic, and the investors would quickly try to pull their money out. Thus, a huge market cap is not a security blanket.
Still, the fact I presented can’t be disputed, and that is that, Microsoft was a much bigger company than any other. Apple is stil very far off the peak of Microsoft.
Apple will, again, be just another tech company, with low earnings and a low market cap, and not even close to what it is today; not with one basic product driving their earnings. Apple’s ecosystem consists of the iPhone supported by iOS, and the ‘apps’ system. Once the iPhone loses its luster, the whole ecosystem will collapse. Apple is trying to prevent the inevitable by partnering with IBM, but, that’s just intended to get iPads to become relevant again. Apple’s efforts in the enterprise arena, are phony, and most businesses will recognize that fact and will stay away from the Apple/IBM phony venture.
Profits now, does not guarantee that, the profits will continue forever. Palm and RIM were never as big as Apple is now, but, they were the ‘unbeatable’ biggies of their time in the mobile arena, and, where are they now? Apple will meee the same fate. The Apple bubble is unsustainable.
Quoting from the article ... “After recording the biggest quarterly profit by any company ever ...”
A quote from my post ... “... the most successful company in the history of business ...”
I would say that’s pretty well proven ... :-) ...
The price of Microsoft was WAY over blown compared to Apple. Analysts of the period predicted a huge adjustment and it came. Analysts today say that Apple is way under-valued. . . and many are predicting Apple may reach a market cap of $1 Trillion.
Your claim of all those products at Microsoft ignores many products at Apple other than the iPhone that are bringing in a lot more than $1 Billion per product. In fact, Apple's products brought in THREE TIMES more revenue than did Microsoft's in the last calendar quarter of 2014 for a total of $74.5 Billion and profits of $18 billion. . . a profit equal to 70% of Microsoft's entire revenue for the quarter.
Your ignorance of Apple makes you claim that Apple is not diversified. . . despite Apple selling the best selling tablet computer in the world, a desktop and laptop computer that takes home 53% of all the profits in the personal computer market, having an App store that takes home greater than 65% of the profits in mobile apps, a Digital Music store that takes home more than 55% of the digital music industry's sales profits, an ebook store that is taking 30% of the profits in ebooks industry, and a new payment system which has garnered more than two-thirds of all secure card-less payments made in the USA in less than four months representing half-a trillion dollars of transactions of which Apple will take 0.15% (that is $1.5 Billion on each trillion dollars of transactions which is just taking off and is estimated may reach $10 Trillion of transactions in just a few years!). Even Apple's "little hobby" set-top AppleTV sold more than $4 Billion in the last quarter. In the smartphone business, despite hearing that Apple's iPhones will be dying on the vine anyway now, in the last full quarter, Apple outsold every other smartphone in the market (actually, they've done that every quarter for the last five years), but this last quarter they out sold the Number one maker of Android phones entire output, grabbing 25.4% of the Chinese smartphone market, better than 50% of the US market, 33% of Samsung's and LG's, the number one and two Android smartphones, in their own home market of South Korea!, and many other major markets.
You say that Apple needs to diversify . . but then in another breath, you claim if they buy other companies and diversify, it is a sign signifying panic. You want your cake and to eat it too. . . but Apple doesn't do what you claim. They buy companies that enhance their core strengths. . . or new markets they intend to enter and disrupt. Sorry, you just do not know what you are talking about.