- Sunday, 22 November 2009
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Advertising is the rattling of a stick inside a swill bucket - George Orwell
Apple is worth more than Google
IN THE MIDDLE of silly season the habitually fawning Apple press has wet itself because the fruit themed toymaker is worth more than the super-sized Google.
Business Weak has used the opportunity of a brief surge in value of shares for Apple, coupled with a drop by Google to claim that Apple is worth more than the search outfit. It claims that the toymaker is now well on the way to becoming worth more than Microsoft.
The article poses the question that now Apple has once again passed Google in market value, can the consumer-electronics maker maintain its lead?
The business magazine lists shedloads of reasons why Apple is wonderful and how it will be the world leader. The reasons it gives should have been enough for an editor to order the hack to take a holiday to rest his clearly tortured logic.
"Google has an incomparably profitable Web-search operation, but it incurs losses in scores of other businesses. Apple, on the other hand, makes money on everything it does, even the music and applications sold in an effort to get people to buy the hardware devices that are its true business."
The article said that Apple will get bigger than Google because it has more room to grow in its core business. Google gets about 70 per cent of the revenue from the $14 billion online advertising business, Apple has well under 10 per cent of the computer business, and about 8 percent of mobile phones.
The writer maintains that Apple's profits are more protected from competition than Google's which has lots of competition while Jobs' Mob apparently has none. It is news to us to discover that Apple has a monopoly of the PC market and has no competition. Apparently it has total control of the smartphone market too. Whereas Google has no market dominance at all.
Now that Apple is set to release its Tablet PCs it will grab a larger slice of consumer spending too, the writer claims.
This is despite the fact that many people think the tablet will go the way of the Apple Newton, another one of those flops that the writer fails to mention (along with the Apple TV).
The fact of the matter is that Google is suffering from a downturn in online advertising. When the economy picks up its shares are going to be worth a lot of money. Apple on the other hand can only expect modest gains. As for Apple being worth more than Microsoft one day.... µ
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boring, boring, boring and not funny at all
In 1997 MS should have just bought Apple and this story would have never been....
..instead they gave em $100m. If I were Billy I'd get Jobs down on his hallowed knees to beg for that mullah... and then tore the chq.
The original article also seems to conveniently forget that fact that if Apple were to get anywhere near a majority market share the various monopolies and anti-trust authorities would tear them a new one. They can only get away with their current anti-competitive behaviour due to their relative size.
While I disagree with you about the tablet Nick, I completely agree with everything else you had to say here and tell hexx that if it wasn't funny its because its freaking true and when this kind of crap is true there isn't anything funny about it.
...people will realise Apple is more evil than MS soon...
Until Steve Jobs backdates his stock options again.
totally agree. Apple is dirtier than Intel or Microsoft ever was.... and they get away with it, over and over.
If apple ever got really big, they'd have to grow up fast or get sued by world + dog. Funny thing is all the stuff people like about mac's would have to go. Only apple can make them, no good. only mac os and it only runs on their hardware, no good. comes with apple's browser/email/etc programs installed, no good. itunes only works with the ipod, no good. itunes doesn't support other music stores, no good. response time to security updates, no good...
by the time the legal system was done making them play 'fair' like they did to microsoft - i'd say the mac experience would pretty much be identical to the pc experience.
People seem to fixate on Apple vs Microsoft. Apple is not only up against Microsoft, they're up against every PC manufacturer out there. Only Apple is allowed to sell computers with Apple OS installed. Microsoft just makes an operating system that any PC manufacturer can use. For Apple to gain majority share of PC market, you’re talking about putting big hits on the profits of companies like Dell and HP. They’re also looking at effecting hardware manufacturers as well. There is a very short list of what Apple’s OSX will run on. So that means profit hits for Nvidia and ATI.
I think Apple will have to make some fundamental changes is they want to beat Microsoft.
I remember someone created a plugin to filter drashek comments a while ago. Could someone please create one for Nick Farrell 'articles'?
Nick: If you don't like Apple, just don't buy their stuff! It's pretty easy, and the rest of the world really don't care about your tired opinions on the company.
@Kevin, there should be appleboys filter too - we need only to extend Drashek's filter to include filtering for fanaticism.
About the article I agree N.F. should pick at least partially truthful/believable sources. True, Apple has market growth perspective but we're talking about tens of times more sales needed in order to reach M$ and PC industry. And even then Apple will have to earn profits for several years to reach slightly M$' capital. I for one seriously doubt that corporate business will ever prefer Apple rather than M$/HP/DELL/etc. with their current price and support policy...
@Andrew
I agree. There is a total failure of regulation here. Apple is a shameless monopolist. They are scientologists, but even worse. All the characteristics of a cult. It sells overpriced machines that can only run on their overpriced OS. It brainwashes their consumers with eyecandy. It drop technologies willy-nilly (e.g recently mat screens, firewire, analog out), and demand acolytes pay money year by year just to keep up. Tiger, Leopard, Snow Leopard. No differences between them just guff. But the cultists gobble them up to continue to be part of the cult. Anyone who criticizes - bam smash - the cultists are in a blood frenzy. In an app that threatens the iphone monopoly - banned.
Nick maybe wrong in just about everything he writes, but perhaps he is more like a canary in a coal mine. I just hope he doesn't asphyxiate before there is a concerted regulatory effort to break up Apple and get a level playing field again.
I'm amazed that Google makes any money at all. Who clicks on their stupid ads? It's gotta be our grandparents, because I can't think of anyone else who would. On the other hand, Apple makes stuff that some people actually want, like computers and mp3 players. Nobody wants ads.
As for the NF haters, get a sense of humor. His articles might not be accurate, but they are entertaining. :)
Seriously. Apple is only interested in making products they can charge a premium for. That's why they make assloads of money. Their products might or might not be worth it (depending on what you value and on the value of your time), but that's for people to decide and apparently enough of them vote for Apple with their wallets to make Apple's stock worth a bit.
Let's see - Apple makes computers with an operating system that doesn't suck ass, the best music players, one of the best cell phones. There stuff isn't cheap, it isn't perfect, but it's all well-designed, good looking, and it all works pretty well. They make sure to stick to markets that are very profitable, and therefore they have lots of money. Most of us call that "smart." The stock market pays a premium for "smart" (at least most of the time).
Lenovo, HP, Dell, Gateway, etc. make decent to lousy hardware that runs a shit operating system and fight tooth and nail to make a few dollars on each unit. Their stuff is mostly cheap, until you factor in the cost of dealing with all of the Windows bullshit (ask any IT department what the cost of computer acquisition is versus the cost of maintenance over time). If any one of them had their PC operations go out of business tomorrow we'd hardly notice. This is frigtarded, and the companies' PC operations are valued as such.