Microsoft Officially Passes Apple to Become Most Valuable Company

Megalith

Megalith

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Some believed that Microsoft passing Apple earlier this week was merely a temporary fluke, but even the biggest skeptics are now admitting the latter has officially been “dethroned as the world's most valuable company.” Microsoft managed to beat Apple yesterday and ended the day as the most valuable company with a market cap of $851 billion, and their value appears to be holding at $851B vs. $847B.

Microsoft doesn't have to worry about the "flat-lining" market for smartphones plaguing Apple, says Dan Morgan, senior portfolio manager at Synovus Trust. Neither is it particularly vulnerable to an exodus of social media users over privacy concerns. "Microsoft's huge strides that it has made in the cloud space ... is more enterprise focused," Morgan says. That "has allowed [its] shares to outperform its tech brethren."
 
Good! Glad Microsoft is up there again. Apple's been getting too smug these days. How long can they keep milking the iphone and before customers wise up?
 
redmasc said:
Good! Glad Microsoft is up there again. Apple's been getting too smug these days. How long can they keep milking the iphone and before customers wise up?
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Looks like Microsoft didn't need to compete in the smart phone market after all.
Now that cell phones are a commodity item, Apple's high margin business is starting to slump.
Apple has a choice. Either bring out lower cost phones (with less profits), or lose market share.
Either way, looks like Apple has peaked unless they can find a new must have, high margin product to sell.
 
So... after trying to be the hip startup company selling trendy apps and gadgets MS figured out they are good at serving business customers. Like they made their initial loads of money.

Nah. I'm sure they will try to transition the enterprise and server editions of windows to only run on smart watches.
 
I have to say, this came out of left field for me.

People have been talking about Microsoft missing the mobile explosion, failing with windows mobile and Nokia's phone division.

I had essentially resigned Microsoft to a has-been company with it's glory days behind it in the 80's and 90's.

Up until now I had operated under the assumption that they made one last big push With Windows 10, trying to force users to a Freemium Ecosystem model like Apple and Google, but that this too had failed, as very few buy anything in the Microsoft Store, and they recently shut down Groove Music because no one was subscribing.

So, where is the profit coming from? Enterprise Clients/Servers and Office are probably huge, but enterprise likely isn't a huge growth market for them. That's their stagnant cash cow.

Azure maybe? It's not as big as AWS, but maybe it's more profitable? Xbox and Gaming?

I just don't know.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I have to say, this came out of left field for me.

People have been talking about Microsoft missing the mobile explosion, failing with windows mobile and Nokia's phone division.

I had essentially resigned Microsoft to a has-been company with it's glory days behind it in the 80's and 90's.

Up until now I had operated under the assumption that they made one last big push With Windows 10, trying to force users to a Freemium Ecosystem model like Apple and Google, but that this too had failed, as very few buy anything in the Microsoft Store, and they recently shut down Groove Music because no one was subscribing.

So, where is the profit coming from? Enterprise Clients/Servers and Office are probably huge, but enterprise likely isn't a huge growth market for them. That's their stagnant cash cow.

Azure maybe? It's not as big as AWS, but maybe it's more profitable? Xbox and Gaming?

I just don't know.
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Actually, looking at it more closely, this looks more like it has to do with Apple losing value than it has to do with Microsoft gaining it.

upload_2018-12-1_21-6-0.png


upload_2018-12-1_21-6-34.png


Microsoft has had some OK growth, but nothing crazy. Apple, on the other had doesn't look too hot lately.
 
nutzo said:
Looks like Microsoft didn't need to compete in the smart phone market after all.
Now that cell phones are a commodity item, Apple's high margin business is starting to slump.
Apple has a choice. Either bring out lower cost phones (with less profits), or lose market share.
Either way, looks like Apple has peaked unless they can find a new must have, high margin product to sell.
Click to expand...

They have been switching to even higher margin services. App Store, Apple Pay, Apple Music, and soon Apple TV or whatever it’s called.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Actually, looking at it more closely, this looks more like it has to do with Apple losing value than it has to do with Microsoft gaining it.

View attachment 124389

View attachment 124390

Microsoft has had some OK growth, but nothing crazy. Apple, on the other had doesn't look too hot lately.
Click to expand...

Seriously? Are you smoking crack?

Microsoft is up ~38% in a single year, and you consider that just OK growth? How many other fortune 100 companies see growth like that in a year? For a company that was stagnant for years, Microsoft is exploding in growth.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
I have to say, this came out of left field for me.

People have been talking about Microsoft missing the mobile explosion, failing with windows mobile and Nokia's phone division.

I had essentially resigned Microsoft to a has-been company with it's glory days behind it in the 80's and 90's.

Up until now I had operated under the assumption that they made one last big push With Windows 10, trying to force users to a Freemium Ecosystem model like Apple and Google, but that this too had failed, as very few buy anything in the Microsoft Store, and they recently shut down Groove Music because no one was subscribing.

So, where is the profit coming from? Enterprise Clients/Servers and Office are probably huge, but enterprise likely isn't a huge growth market for them. That's their stagnant cash cow.

Azure maybe? It's not as big as AWS, but maybe it's more profitable? Xbox and Gaming?

I just don't know.
Click to expand...

Azure is going strong. Office 365 too.

It's not about growing your customer count, but transitioning existing ones to a monthly/yearly payment schedule. Recurring revenue is the name of the game, and instead of going Pay2Play with Windows, they did so with the related software.

Next step is to make getting regular Office licenses so expensive/annoying to the point it ceases to be worth it. Then, it's either 365 or Libre Office. I'd wager most will jump to 365, which is precisely what they want.

They will also tie more and more Windows Server functionalities with their Azure cloud offerings, which will eventually make most people skip the on-prem server altogether, or get both. At any rate, that's recurring revenue.

5150Joker said:
View attachment 124415

The browner Steve Jobs
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He's no Jobs - the ultimate hype machine - but he's very good. Right now MS is everything I don't want in software, but the fact that they used their strengths to reinvent themselves and become relevant once again is undeniable.
 
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Time2Kill said:
Seriously? Are you smoking crack?

Microsoft is up ~38% in a single year, and you consider that just OK growth? How many other fortune 100 companies see growth like that in a year? For a company that was stagnant for years, Microsoft is exploding in growth.
Click to expand...

Alright, I'll give you that, the growth is good, but Apple had a trillion market cap not that long ago, and now Microsoft is the biggest with "only" an $850 billion market cap.

So, my point is still that it seems more of a measure of how much Apple has fallen than it is a measure of how well Microsoft has grown.
 
Lol except server 2016 still ignores GPOs for updates and has no cancel button on updates. They care the most about Azure and Linux (50% of Azure is Linux now.) They don't give a shit about server.

mord said:
So... after trying to be the hip startup company selling trendy apps and gadgets MS figured out they are good at serving business customers. Like they made their initial loads of money.

Nah. I'm sure they will try to transition the enterprise and server editions of windows to only run on smart watches.
Click to expand...
 
I bought some shares in MSFT about 5 years ago. It's been a very good investment so far. I also purchased shares in Apple near Job's death - that's also done very well.
I've sold a little of each to lock in some gains. I'm playing with the dealer's money with both of these now.
Microsoft has streamlined and seems to be making better business decisions. Basically, invest where there is growth and revenue. If Azure can stay competitive with AWS (and other players), this should be a nice revenue stream. In my neck of the woods, several companies refuse AWS as Amazon.com competes with their core business (retail side). Not sure how wide spread this is, but its a definite factor in my region as some of the larger IT employers are in the retail space.
Apple? Man, I'm contemplating selling a few more shares. They are locked in too much with the iPhone and I think they've over priced them. (Of course, none of their products are cheap and are overpriced). They've had some misfires - HomeKit, AirPods (is that the name of their speaker), Mac Pro, etc. On the other hand, they have a nice platform for developers. I develop mobile apps so macOS is a requirement for Xcode. The same system happily runs Android Studio, Visual Studio, Postman, Docker, etc.
What I'd like to see: the BAMF. This is a system that the owner can swap out memory, storage, upgrade/replace CPU's, etc. I'd like a Threadripper version please. Oh yeah, I want a rack mount version of this for my automated build servers. Basically, bring back the old Mac Pro from 8-10 years ago. Ok, you can quite laughing at me. Also, please stop playing Aerosmith "Dream On". Instead, we are presented with the Mac Mini. Lower the price by a few hundred, and they are a better option. Apple has 0 interest in this type of system. The development market is probably a very small part of their overall sales (I have no statistics).
 
Loose Nut said:
That does not mean Microsoft is doing a better job, it just means apple is fucking up more than Microsoft for the time being.
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So, one Superbowl team won because the other team messed up, got it. :D
 
Loose Nut said:
That does not mean Microsoft is doing a better job, it just means apple is fucking up more than Microsoft for the time being.
Click to expand...

I don't see that changing any time soon unless Apple decide to ditch Tim. The direction he's taking of tv show / movie production is a bottomless pit to throw money into if you don't know what you're doing (plently of people willing to steal your money in that business). Meanwhile he's neglected large portions of his product stack and probably permanently lost long time customers due to that neglect.
 
Zarathustra[H] said:
Alright, I'll give you that, the growth is good, but Apple had a trillion market cap not that long ago, and now Microsoft is the biggest with "only" an $850 billion market cap.

So, my point is still that it seems more of a measure of how much Apple has fallen than it is a measure of how well Microsoft has grown.
Click to expand...
Fallen is the wrong choice of words for Apple they have remained mostly flat year over year they've been stagnant essentially neither growing much nor shrinking much year over year.
 
So MS shareprice has increased, which means the markets like what MS are doing... Azure's and defocusing windows10

Hands up those that think windows10, and its quality, are going to improve WHEN doing the opposite was deemed a good thing(tm) by the markets
 
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