The Apple Core

Jason D. O'Grady & David Morgenstern

Apple: Way the most valuable tech company in the world

By | February 15, 2011, 12:05pm PST

At the close of the New York markets on Tuesday, Apple climbed $100 billion past Microsoft in market valuation. And the little engine that could keeps climbing, way more than Hewlett Packard, Sony, Dell and the many others that once pronounced it dead.

In a post on Seeking Alpha, MG Siegler points out the rise of Apple is counterpointed by the descent of Microsoft. A year ago, Microsoft’s valuation was some $60B more than Apple. Today, Apple has a market cap of $330.66B while Microsoft is at $228B. What a switch!

In fact, not only is it clear now that Microsoft will not be re-taking the crown as the most-valuable tech company any time soon, but they’re flirting with being knocked down to the number three — or even number four spot. In the past year, while Microsoft’s stock is down slightly, Google’s is up nearly $100-a-share. This has allowed the search giant to surpass the $200 billion market cap themselves. And they’re now just $28 billion away from Microsoft.

Question, if Google passes Microsoft in valuation, how many days later will the reign of Steve Ballmer last?

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Topics

David Morgenstern has covered the Mac market and other technology segments for 20 years.

Disclosure

David Morgenstern

Freelance journalist/blogger David Morgenstern has nothing to disclose.

Biography

David Morgenstern

David Morgenstern has covered the Mac market and other technology segments for 20 years. In the recent past, he founded Ziff-Davis' Storage Supersite, served as news editor for Ziff Davis Internet and held several executive editorial positions at eWEEK. In the 1990s, David was editor of Ziff Davis' award-winning MacWEEK news publication as well as its successor title, eMediaWEEKly, which focused on multiplatform professional content creation. His byline can be found online and in print publications including CreativePro.com, Peachpit Press' Mac Bible and Popular Photography.

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RE: Apple: Way the most valuable tech company in the world
jackson1984-24316069205748857739440257893812 11th Oct
They are impressive content articles or weblog posts, I truly appriciate your give chestnut ugg superior effects.
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Apple Stock is way undervalued by Wall Street for its growth. It is treated more like a value stock than a growth stock. Aapl should be worth a lot more than the 360 or so it commands now.

Aapl P.E 20, Forward P.E 13.6
Google PE 23.7, Forward P.E 17.37
Amazon P.E P.E 74, Forward PE 43
Netflix P.E 81, Forward P.E 39

Apple has higher income growth than Google, Amazon or Netflix yet is valued lower. If Apple was valued like Amazon with a P.E 74, aapl would be waaay more than 360 a share especially if you consider the 60 billion pile of cash Apple has and no debt .
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Investors Hate Cash Going to Waste
i2fun@... 17th Feb 2011
@Davewrite It isn't making them any money. Plus the formula for Market Cap value requires it to be excluded anyway. Unless your cheating Market Cap value with it included.

Plus right now.... the truth is that the iPad is the only thing good iCrAppleholics have to hang on to. Well at least for a little while longer. With Android now out pacing iOS by a long shot. Now just behind RIM in Total smartphone percentages.

http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9208540/Android_outranks_iPhone_in_latest_comScore_data?taxonomyId=15

Better all stock up on RDF (Reality Distortion Field) spiked CrApple Juice and hope you're all too intoxicated to care when their bubble gets popped!!! grin
@i2fun@...

Apple's cash IS making them money. Start with the $3.9 Billion they spent pre-paying for critical parts for the next year or so. And that was just in the last quarter.

Apple has become very good in terms of investing Billions in the future, either in component pre-payments, investments in capital equipment, R&D spending, etc.

And they have the opportunity to earn interest and/or capital gains on invested cash.

And the ability to pick up companies important to their future without anyone being concerned about their cash accounts.
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Apple should buy MS...
itguy08 15th Feb 2011
Things would get real interesting then. They could snap it up at a fire sale price. happy

Seriously, they would be wise to invest in their competitor while it is cheap. Owning a significant chunk would mean some control over the direction of the company and ensuring that products stay available.
@itguy08 There's little something called MONOPOLY. Or were you sarcastic?
@statuskwo5
Monopolies in of themselves are not illegal. It's what you do when you are a monopoly (or near-monopoly) that gets you into trouble.
@itguy08 Ballmer would be the first one with an Apple shaped bootprint on his behind out the door.
@Ron Burgundy I have to admit that was funny.
@Ron Burgundy

wink
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@Ron Burgundy I would want Apple to buy MS for just that reason and then sell it once Ballmer is out the door!
@Ron Burgundy Microsoft should have gotten rid of Ballmer years ago. In fact, after the Vista debacle Ballmer should have been dropped. He's lacks vision, creativity, and has done poor overall job.
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Another form of value
CowLauncher Updated - 15th Feb 2011
Interestingly very few seem to be looking at how Apple got to this position as something to be highly valued. Is it because the PC industry has been skewed from the very beginning to be unapproachable and daunting to normal consumers?

There is still a mentality even by many readers of these blogs that if something is easy to use then it is inferior. A lot of folks made living by stuff being hard to use and complex.
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Come on, spread the hate how this is unfair.
@Ron Burgundy

Apple's gonna run out of lipstick for that pig of an OS soon. Marketing can certainly get you cash and apparently rusted on fanbois, but in the end, research and development wins. Sooner or later Apple will run out of people with more money than sense, even with one being born every minute.

Apple, the pet rock of the noughties.

How did I do Ron? wink
@tonymcs@... You did horrible.
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If what you've stated is satire...
godsfault 16th Feb 2011
@tonymcs@... you did horribly.

If what you've stated are your beliefs, you're merely nuts and your family shouldn't allow you to invest your/their money in the stock market.
@tonymcs@...
So by your logic everyone that ever buys any Apple product is suddenly a "Fanboi".
What turnip-headed drivel!
My brother WAS a pc head. Then he got Hackintosh, loved it so much he bought an iMac and now he's a "fanboi"? My drummer buddy WAS a pc user. Then he got an iPad, and now his business is Mac only.
I have so many stories like those it's quite an amazing trend when you think about it.

Sorry, you have your jaded opinion but no facts to back it up.
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How did y0u do?
Fred Fredrickson 16th Feb 2011
@tonymcs@...

Judging by the response, pretty well - I think you have this trolling thing nearly down pat. All that was missing was a Jobs jibe, the more tasteless the better.
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OMG.... that was awesome! lol....
i2fun@... Updated - 17th Feb 2011
@tonymcs@...
But I would also add the "Furbie" of this decade. Remember Furbies? Yeah they were a Fad just like iFad. With kids forcing their parents into the nut house with their blithering idiocy. Not unlike these iCrAppleholics... eh?

So parents got smart and removed the batteries! grin hmmmm.... it's a pity we can't do that to iFads! :P ..... so now all these iCrAppleholic iFad addicted brainless kiddies have their parents/family members beat this round!

No wonder Obama's Health Care plan was passed. We need to take care of all the parents locked away in rubber rooms!!! haha....
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@Ron Burgundy Yeah where ARE the usual ABAers?
we'll be on mars in a year!
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It doesnt and never will matter
Bay Area CA Male Updated - 15th Feb 2011
Until most of us here on this blog have been reduced to ashes,,, there will always be that ******** group of geeks known as the iHaters.

It doesnt matter and never will how much cash Apple has in hand, or how high their market cap goes, or how many billions in revenue they make. Hell it wont even matter when Apple becomes the first Tri$$ion company!
According to these geeks, many of which make up the Tech blogsphere.... it will all be artificial, temporary, and "right-around-the-corner from a droid or MS takever".

These geeks, until they exhale their last breath, will swear on their life that Apple is around the corner from imploding.
To these losers in this geekdom, Less is more.

It wont matter that Macs are the third largest PC sellers, or that iPhone makes up 80%+ of the high-end smartphone market, or that iPad will continue to eat 60-90% of the tablet market thru 2011 and 2012... It doesnt matter and never will!!!
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You're right
klumper Updated - 15th Feb 2011
@Bay Area CA Male

It doesn't and never will if in the end it is done without a modicum of morals, scruples and strictly to the betterment of a chosen few (and increasingly foreign into the bargain) at the expense of the many (American workers). As long as Jobs proudly claims Apple is an American company, he needs to shut up and put up.

ALL Apple jobs should be American as they were from the outset, from the line work to the drawing boards to the boardrooms. Ditto for every other former American institution now being hauled away piecemeal by the multi-national "elite" and padded by parasitical string-pullers known as international financiers.
Your conclusions are short sighted where they are not false. These ideas are like a cancer in this country, consuming us from the inside. Do you have any idea what would happen in the us and the world in general if there were a significantly resurgent movement in this country towards economic protectionism? First your iPad would cost 20000$. Then a third of the countries in the world would declare war on each other.
@klumper "Workers of the World Unite!"

Yeah? How's that working out for you so far? A world economy, i.e., as free a market as is possible, will prevent more wars and save more lives than your model of the world. And that's a fact, jack. History, it's what's good for you. Read it sometime.
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@klumper products in America simply won't work in today's world economy. So, why heap blame on Jobs?

What is happening in the world economy is a leveling of wages which means that high wage countries are reducing wages and low wage countries are raising them.

You may not like this, nor do I, but we don't have to like reality; we just have to conform to it.
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Hey Manny, Moe and Fact Jack
klumper 16th Feb 2011
@ caburlingame | godsfault | dheady

Look below for your responses - and so you can learn.
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@Bay Area CA Male Assuming you include your self in that you jack wagon, wipe your mouth you missed a spot again.
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I think MSFT is losing its edge. The company doesn't seems to have a "vision" unlike Apple or Google (hopefully Jobs returns and the new management in Google runs good too). When Apple successfully launched iPad( p.s. now, ipas is coming, Leaked Photos of the upcoming iPad 2), Google immediate partnered with other manufacturers to produce similar tablets using their Android OS. Microsoft only managed to announce they are coming up with a Tablet version of Windows. This is clearly a sign that they've been lagging the rest of the pack.
@summer77 If you read the history of personal computing you'll discover that Microsoft has never, intentionally, innovated a thing. From stealing CMP and relabeling it MSDOS to being the fox in Apple's Mac hen house to stealing QuickTime (notice a pattern here) to Zune, et al, ad nauseum.

Why on earth would we expect Microsoft to have 'vision' now? Since the QuickTime debacle Apple, for one, has smartened up and patented to the hilt, thus depriving MS of the only 'vision' they ever had, that of eyeing the competition for product to thieve.
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Ballmer
rhon@... 16th Feb 2011
Ballmer is the living proof of why a tech company can fall just because of their president. Ballmer has a voice of a coconut grinder and he is sweating so heavily that anyone considering buying a product thinks that he is cheated.
@rhon@... Ballmer is merely the quintessential MicroSoft visionary. If you can't steal it, crush it. If you can't crush it, ignore it. If you can't ignore it, hope it goes away.
@dheady@... I'm kinda chuckling to myself at how succinct and accurate that is.
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Apple
sundayniagara@... 16th Feb 2011
Has Ballmer ever been right regarding Apple?
I wish that Apple Macs were the defacto computer OS and hardware standard in the world today and not just the small player in this market. Apple is making the big footprints in wireless and so forth rather than in the area that matters to me. I still save my image files as Windows friendly...just in case. One just does not know what the future might bring in this regard. 90% of computers today run the Windows systems of one sort or another. Businesses are by nature, conservative low IQ sorts of places run by suits. They still see Apple as a flaky style concious hardware company. They are very wrong as Apple software is first rate and the OS is so stable being tied as it is to Unix bedrock. You get what you pay for and Apple product/software is worth every cent I ever paid for it. It is not just a tool but it is an investment in confidence, efficiency and value. The stock reflects its corporate value. It is one of the few exceptions that give Apple to me the accolade as a good corporate citizen. Few others (Google being one) deserves that criteria in my opinion. It is not so much that Apple is notably socially active but rather they have brought information technology to the educational marketplace and the younger generation in a way that has taken away the geek criteria necessary to make it work and thus opened its floodgate to artists, writers, politicians, philosophers and intellects as well as revolutionaries wanting to bring democracy to their miserable fascist nations. IPod Touch and the iPhone and their competitors on Android are harbingers of what will keep the world on track to a kind of universal truth that the Mubaraks and scum of that sort will quake in fear of crossing. Next I hope that internet services such as Twitter and Facebook can be harnessed to destroy the loonies in Iran. Sure, it is not Apple per se that is doing this but it was their example, simple and straightforward non technically oriented design software/hardware that has made democracy arrive into the hands of millions. The goal of Apple to make things that just work is the paradigm now used by any successful IT company and one can lay at the feet of Apple that desire to give us all the gift of a world view.
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Apple patches software
kdjkdj@... 16th Feb 2011
@nfiertel

all the time. Fix after fix after fix goes in just like for MS. MS notifies uers of fixes that are made, Apple hides them. Why?
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Apple "patches" its software because...
godsfault 16th Feb 2011
@kdjkdj@... nearly all software nowadays is tremendously complicated; it simply can't be perfect on its first iteration, in particular because of the ever increasing security attacks.

I'm not aware of any "hiding" on Apples's part, and, besides, I just want my software to work; I don't care about how they make it work.

What is it, specifically, that you want Apple to reveal? The more intuitive or easy it is for me to operate Apple's products, without technical expertise, the better I like it and the better the public likes it.

Is it that you just like to argue with Apple's success?
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To Manny, Moe and Fact Jack
klumper 16th Feb 2011
caburlingame
[Protectionist] ideas are like a cancer in this country.

Since we have so little of that, looks to me like the only ideas that seem to be consuming us like a cancer are those borderless, one-world ones that keep sinking us ever further. All it amounts to is economic socialism, and guess who is expected to pay for it both short and long term? Bingo.

First your iPad would cost 20000$.

The growing unemployed, underemployed and homeless have no need let alone funds for such gadgets. By that framing, maybe you ought to consider where you own priorities lie.

dheady@...
"Workers of the World Unite!" Yeah? How's that working out for you so far?

I'd take it over "Parasites of the World Unite!" You know what, let me go ask all those folks in the unemployment line which slogan they prefer, since a big shot like you can't be bothered. Your grasp of history is also juvenile, but then, did you learn that in your socialist history class, or in business school?

world economy, i.e., as free a market

The one world economy will be anything but free, and so far from our actual control that it will be laughable. We're already seeing the first phase of it being put in place, with record numbers of Americans losing their jobs, their homes, their security, their futures. And right when it appeared we had a "lock" of sorts on a bright economic future with the burgeoning personal computer revolution we created. Imagine that.

Ah but then our crown princes turned it all over to the lowest bidders for treatment so that same chosen elite could live like kings on top of mountains of private loot, and look where we are now. Eh keep laughing Fat Fact Jack, 'til they find a way to replace your overpaid ass.
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Manny, Moe and Fact Jack
klumper 16th Feb 2011
godsfault
Products in America simply won't work in today's world economy.

Says who, the tortoise to the hare?? Try the ones selling out this country while they privately profit by it. For the first 400 years of this country's existence, we did perfectly fine providing for ourselves. And now we're told we can't compete!

Put down that One World Kool-aide you're getting stoned on, look around you and stop mimicking those who are putting collars on your future. Someday you may even thank me - but I won't hold my breath.

What is happening in the world economy is a leveling of wages which means that high wage countries are reducing wages and low wage countries are raising them.

Hard to believe you're applauding the redistribution of American wealth and the lowering of the living standards our ancestors achieved (unless of course you're not American). That would be called LCD socialism by any other name, only now they're attempting to erect it on a borderless scale! [*John Carroll applauds in background*]

Import blue and white scab labor at every turn, ignore the home grown, then dish up plenty of pr0n and inane "entertainment" to keep the twittering masses amused and sufficiently distracted. Our ancestors built this country empire so we can watch some technocrat brat pack can give it away while profiting like princes. Right. Kiss my ass.
Microsoft's market cap is no doubt under pressure from all the longtime shareholders who are now divesting.

Thousands of people who joined the company in the 1980s and early 90s received sizable slices of the IPO and/or vintage stock options when Bill Junior was passing them out like cotton candy.

There are also what us Pacific Northwesterners call "Microsoft Trust Fund Babies" who were gifted thousands of shares of stock twenty-odd years ago as tax shelters for the capital gains.

For a crucial fifteen years after the IPO most Microsoft stock was locked up in these Day One investments and valuation depended on what little stock did trade. During this time face value skyrocketed more than seventyfold, and remains in excess of a twentyseven-fold gain when inflation adjusted today.

Cashouts started almost immediately though. The first to bail were the early retirees, who often leave after as little as fifteen years with the company. Their cashouts began in the Clinton Administration and continue today.

Next came the Trust Fund Babies, the oldest of whom reached age of majority at the turn of millennium. They are now old enough to want the comforts of life: college, marriage, small Greek islands etc.

finally came the company officers themselves, beginning with Bill Gates himself, who divested ten figures when he left to run his Bill and Melinda Gate Foundation fulltime. So far steve Ballmer has shown restraint in devisting merely nine figures, though he often does this in short intense bursts.

Trading in Microsoft is so dominated by these cash-outs today that the stock simply cannot rise above US$29 anymore, and most sell orders appear to be set to as little as US$27.

Consider that if you received your shares at the IPO your inflation-adjusted cost to control a modern share is less than a dollar. Sell that share for a measly $27 and you reap 2600% profit. Eventually the Johnny-Come-Latelys will be settling for 300% or 200% profit and cashing out too, because the stock has no "legs" left and will never gain another tenfold over investment again.

Yet Microsoft stock remains a 7 on a scale of 10 when it comes to buy versus sell recommendations. These recommendations plus glowing memories of the glory days help keep Microsoft afloat; like Wile E Coyote charging off a mesa on a puff of dust and not falling until the dust clears, they are walking on empty promises now.

The end comes when the Xbox 360's lifecycle approaches its oft-quoted 2015 maturity and Microsoft has to market a new epochal platform again. Selling the Xbox 360 into the market took half of Microsoft's cash in 2005-2007 and they've commited most of what remained to building Bing; what's left? Selling Microsoft's stake in itself?
Microsoft has all the genius it needs to be a leader. It just needs a leader. (not a monkey)
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RE: Apple: Way the most valuable tech company in the world
jackson1984-24316069205748857739440257893812 11th Oct
They are impressive content articles or weblog posts, I truly appriciate your give chestnut ugg superior effects.

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