Apple closes the revenue, income gap with Microsoft to just $1 billion | Hacker News Reader

Apple closes the revenue, income gap with Microsoft to just $1 billion

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23 pointsmiles22 comments

What no one seems to talk about is how many billion dollar companies tie into the microsoft stack, I can't think of any on the apple side of things.

I just had a realization. Apple's actually becoming the next Microsoft.

And they're beginning to act the part.

i don't know if i like this future

I am sure that I do not like this future.

In what way?

Microsoft has 90% desktop market share and 90% office market share. Where does Apple have a monopoly where they can drive the market? A mistake or two and they will have a problem. Look at Nokia or Motorola.

Apple is seriously screwed when it's iPod/Phone/Pad/Moneygrabber2020 becomes uncool. Apple isn't even playing a popularity game, they're playing a coolness game, which is infinitely more dangerous. They'll eventually find themselves as the Fonzie on water skis looking at a shark tank.

Microsoft has never been cool, which makes it perfect for corporate business where coolness is treated like an itch in a private place. Until Apple is able to sell itself to big business it is riding a knife-edge trying to stay cool with the college students that change every single year.

Interesting. I'm not sure I entirely agree. I think there are different kinds of "cool".

Music goes through phases, and for a while grunge is cool, and then after a while it becomes uncool (mostly because the popularity attracts dozens of second rate copycats and the airwaves become saturated).

The same thing could happen to apple; maybe all the copycats will dilute the appeal of its products and fatigue will set in for everything Apple.

But there's another kind of "cool" that can last a lot longer. Think BMW or Mercedes. Not for everybody, but they've owned a lot of the upmarket segment for a long time, and the very fact that they're not for everybody probably helps keep the copycats and saturation away.

Maybe the fact that Apple isn't trying to be everything to everybody will help their longevity...

Well, yes and no. Are iPods still cool? Not really. Your mother has one, and she's not cool at all. (Sorry, I'm guessing here). Nobody is impressed by an iPod any more, because everybody has one. But people still buy them, because they don't suck, they work with everything they already have, they're well integrated into the ecosystem (iTunes etc) and because they're so ubiquitous that most people are barely even aware that it has competitors.

In short, I think the iPod is the Microsoft Windows of the mp3 player world.

Apple wants to control their platform. Microsoft wanted to control all platforms. There is a difference.

Or to put it another way, when I have to buy an iPhone to collaborate with people around me who have iPhones, then you'll have an argument to make.

Apple also wants to control other platforms. And they are doing a good job of it, as well. Pushing H.264, their involvement with HTML5 with WebKit. Apple wants to control all aspects, and if they could, they'd control the web experience as well. This isn't to suggest that other companies aren't jockeying for position as well. I just don't think Apple is merely looking at their platform. They see anything that runs on Apple as their platform.

And yes, again, I'm focusing on Apple here, but they aren't the only one playing the game. =)

I don't follow, Apple doesn't control H.264, HTML5 or even WebKit.

Or do you mean, pushing those items over adopting Flash? Even so, that's not Apple controlling the web platform, that's just Apple making sure Adobe doesn't control it.

"Apple doesn't control H.264, HTML5 or even WebKit."

I didn't say they did. I didn't even imply they did. That's not even close to what I said.

They do, however, want to control those technologies, and they want as much control as they can get.

As for Flash, I don't see why this even came into it. I didn't mention it, or even consider it. However, Flash is one more example of Flash in control, and only strengthens my point.

Basically, Apple isn't supporting H.264, HTML5, or WebKit to benefit the open nature of the web. They are supporting it because it gives them more control over their platform.

Finally, as far as WebKit goes, they do control their version of it. They also control how they implement HTML5 on their platform. You can suggest they aren't doing this, but all their actions demonstrate the desire to do just this.

Anyways, next time, focus on what I said. Not what you think I said.

So providing an operating system for zillions of different devices is more evil than providing one for just one hardware device? I don't get it.

...and Apple closed the income gap with Exxon Mobil to ~ $3 billion.

Not that these comparisons are of any value.

And if revenues were the most important number, that would matter somewhat.

To this day I still don't understand why it seems profit is about the last thing people look at. Maybe that explains a lot actually.

In the context of this article Income == Profit. The gap there is "narrowed" to $1B. Still a very large number no matter how you slice it.

yes, but there is a derivative to think about here. How long before that gap is $1B with Apple on the other side. That is the real news here: the delta not the so much the position.

I don't know. Microsoft had larger growth rates than Apple.

http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/04/microsoft_windows_p...

"Microsoft said worldwide Windows consumer licenses grew by more than 35 percent in the recent quarter. By comparison, Apple this week reported an increase of 33 percent in Mac sales over roughly the same time period. That was impressive, too, of course, but Microsoft is growing from a significantly larger base of sales to begin with, making its higher growth rate considerably harder to achieve."

Which is actually interesting, when you consider when Apple succeeded. It was during a time between XP and Windows 7. Vista got thrashed in the press and between friends (and I like Vista), so you didn't have the upgrade their. So, basically Apple was competing against XP.

Of course, this is a simplification of everything, but with Windows 7 doing so well, I think you have a lot of people fine with finally upgrading off their rather old XP machines. Combine that with the economic turn-around, and the fact that people are still money-aware, the lower cost of the upgrade to a Windows 7 machine is very attractive.

With what MS has in store with Live Wave 4, I think we can see them finally bringing things together. Couple that with Windows Phone, and Office 2010, there are a lot of interesting things with MS at the moment.

I am not quite sure why everyone is reporting this number as if it were some miraculous revival of MS. Windows 7 doesn't suck. Lots of people have been waiting, and waiting, and waaaaaaaaaaaiting to upgrade from XP. A lot of them gave up hope and moved to Macs; those users aren't going to be coming back. What MS might have done is stop the bleeding in the desktop OS market. It will take a couple more quarters to see if this is the case. I recently ordered 25 upgrades for sales and marketing people in my company and this sort of SMB activity may also make up a large portion of this growth in "consumer" licenses (Vista sucked so bad we were willing to maintain an EOL version of Windows and even "upgrade" boxes to XP that were shipped to us with Vista.)

In terms of how this fits into the general economic picture, I am waiting to see evidence of this activity as being an upgrade _to_ a Windows 7 machine vs upgrades of existing computers to a new rev of Windows. If non-Apple PC sales show a similar increase then this claim may be valid, but if Apple growth continues to outpace other hardware vendors you will be seeing evidence that this is more of an upgrade in place than any real growth of the Windows ecosystem.

["Interesting" may be one word to describe Windows Phone (or whatever they are calling it this month) but most reviews and reports do not seem share your belief that it is in any way indicative of MS finally "bringing things together"...]

"["Interesting" may be one word to describe Windows Phone (or whatever they are calling it this month) but most reviews and reports do not seem share your belief that it is in any way indicative of MS finally "bringing things together"...]"

2010 + Wave 4 + Windows Phone + Office 2010 + XBox Live + Zune HD

Yes, they are bringing things together. Is everything complete? No. But you can finally see where they want to go, where everything falls into place, and where they want to go. That's really more what I was meant to say by "bringing things together," the start of the "bringing together", not the end. =)

Peanuts

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