Microsoft poised to overtake Apple as most valuable company | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft poised to overtake Apple as most valuable company

appleinsider.com

54 pointsortusdux40 comments

Weird how instinctively zero sum some folks are - as of Microsoft stock doing well means Microsoft is 'winning' while apple is 'losing.' Apple stock is up about 40 percent over the last year they're doing fine

Round and round we go.

https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

Not surprised, where Apple has concentrated brand and product line value, Microsoft has breadth of business.

Apple has the i-line of products, MacBooks and “services”. Microsoft has desktop, devices, games, cloud. It’s no surprise to me.

>analysts expectation of slowing iPhone demand

Has Apple considered making decent phones at budget prices for a change?

Something in the Samsung A34-A54 ~€300 price range.

There's only so many people willing to spend €1k+ on a phone these days.

Fewer skus seems like a massive simplifier to me. The SE and the mini seem to me like their “cheaper” line. I love my iPhone 13 mini for form factor.

Have you ever compared the low-res dim IPS display of a €400+ SE to the much cheaper Samsung A34/A54 that ship with bright 1080p OLED high refresh displays with 128GB to boot? It's not even a competition.

And yes the display matters the most to most consumers as that's the primary interface the user has to the phone. A small dim 720p IPS display doesn't cut it anymore in 2024 especially at €400+ price point where Android competition eats it.

>Fewer skus seems like a massive simplifier to me

What use is fewer SKUs if nobody is buying them?

Nobody in my country(not USA where iPhone is king due to iMessage lock-in and high income) is buying the SE because at that price it's terrible value for money compared to the competition. Everyone is buying mid priced Androids and those with money buy the Pro iPhone but never the SE because it's just shit value.

Apple needs to replace the SE with something more modern with bigger OLED and then it will sell.

Not sure Apple is targeting your market segment then. Clearly they are doing something right considering their revenue, value and performance. The 13 mini has an oled display, not sure what you’re disagreeing with.

I'm not from US but I bought SE. Not sure about situation now as it was ~5 years ago and it still works.

SE 3rd gen is a great small phone, not sure why you say its screen is dim. Glad Samsung worked out for you, that’s the benefit of competition. It’s good that Apple wasn’t able to grip all segments of the market.

>SE 3rd gen is a great small phone, not sure why you say its screen is dim

Because I have a work provided SE3 and the display is worse than on my ancient 2012 Samsung S3, let alone a modern budget Samsung OLED like the A54. It's far gar too expensive for what it offers when you look at the EU market and competition.

It boggles my mind how Apple is selling 2008 display tech at over €400+ when all their cheaper competitors habe bright high refresh rate OLEDs and more storage to boot. No surprise it's not selling well to consumers here.

It's only great if you need the cheapest possible new iphone for the ecosystem, which is why businesses buy fleets of them for the workforce.

I'm not an apple Fan or user, but Rather than screen and other specs, they go for powerful CPU which is probably a small order of magnitude faster than the entry level chips Samsung puts in their budget line. This gives Apple freedom to update it for years.

So does Samsung. My work A52s is 3 years old, still going strong and getting all the latest os upgrades.

For my private phone I bought an S23 flagship. Fastest SoC you can buy from Qualcomm and 120Hz oled, real dualsim, Telefocus camera. And that for less than 100€ more than an iPhone SE :)

I also love the added features like the DeX desktop mode, I use it a lot at work where our computers are severely locked down. Just plug the phone into the docking station and i have my personal pc with 5G unrestricted uplink.

Also here in Europe the SE is 579€ not 429$ which makes it an even worse deal.

>Has Apple considered making decent phones at budget prices for a change?

No. In their entire history, they've hardly ever cared about the low end.

iPads are cheap and provides great value

they did a cheaper iphone SE version in 2016 at one point and time, and it did horribly. Target market for iPhone is the same as for higher end cars, not for performance but for status.

They still have a cheaper (by a bit) SE version. The current one's internals are basically the same as the iPhone 13. Still sells for $429 so above the $300 price point. They picked the designation back up in 2020 with an iPhone 11 based one (released concurrently with the 11) and updated it in 2022 concurrent to the 13's release.

>internals are basically the same as the iPhone 13

But who cares about the internals if the display, the thing via which users operates and consume content on their phones, is absolute garbage on the SE3 for 2024 standards?

"The display might look like shit, but at least I have a top of the line processor." Said no smartphone customer ever.

Guess what, I have an Android with a chip weaker than on my work provided SE3 but it feels much faster and nicer to use because of the brighter 1080p OLED display operating at 90Hz.

Going back to the SE3 60Hz display feels like going back in time over 10 years. Everything motion like scrolling feels slow and janky on it despite the fancy processor.

Top tip: faster refreshing displays make a theoretically slower phone feel faster than a fast phone with a slow display.

> But who cares about the internals if the display, the thing via which users operates and consume content on their phones, is absolute garbage on the SE3 for 2024 standards?

People who want an iPhone and aren't willing to spring another $170 for a better display, obviously. At least the SE should get another 4-5 years of OS support given its internals and Apples's support track record for OS support (5-7 years is typical at this point).

This display thing really seems to bother you a lot for someone who buys Android devices. Why do you care?

Not the OP but I bothers me too. The longevity is not really a benefit for the SE as it is because in 5 years the design and display will feel even more outdated.

Yes I also buy Android but I might not have if Apple had a decent midrange.

Ps Samsung offers really long support now too.

I'm willing to spend a bit more for a better display, which is why I bought an iPhone 12 mini.

Apple discontinued the mini line, so when I upgrade, likely this year, I'll pay them less and get an SE, since it's the only phone they offer of the size I want.

> But who cares about the internals if the display, the thing via which users operates and consume content on their phones, is absolute garbage on the SE3 for 2024 standards?

I use an SE because I care more about having a home button, touch ID, and no notch than a faster and brighter screen. Not having to worry about burn-in is also nice. Different people put higher priorities on different things.

I agree somewhat, but when I separated from my first and only iPhone, iPhone 4, I did miss the ecosystem but that's also why I didn't want another one. From my Macbooks, iCloud, iPhone, the syncing and backing up and all that was seamless, but too intrusive and difficult to even share a damn image w/ a non-Apple device.

TLDR; the Apple ecosystem handcuffs the user, so people stay.

They probably will one of these days. Since most people buy a phone and keep using it until either it gets lost or it’s completely unusable, cutting corners and adopting a strategy of planned obsolescence makes sense.

Their stock is up almost 40 percent over the last year, they've got a 2.8 trillion dollar market cap, 380 billion in revenue. They're doing fine and overreacting to wall street analysts is more likely to cause issues than continuing to make premium phones

The cheapest phone Apple sells is actually only $429: https://www.apple.com/shop/buy-iphone/iphone-se

From The Verge: "You cannot get another phone for under $500 with as fast a processor or as many years of expected updates as an iPhone SE. Apple doesn’t come out and say how many years of OS updates its phones will receive, but the first-generation iPhone SE from 2016 is able to run the latest iOS 15."

https://www.theverge.com/22967925/apple-iphone-se-2022-vs-go...

>The cheapest phone Apple sells is actually only $429:

To the OP asking for ~€300 price range, that is ~$329 USD including Tax. For it to be ~€300 price range and including Tax. That is roughly asking for Apple to sell an Entry level phone at $270 USD. And that assuming the same exchange rate and pricing. Which we know Apple tends to charge a tiny little higher in EUR due to consumer right etc.

The SE used to be $399 but I guess inflation + increased component prices tacked on another $30.

The SE is very good for speed for money yes.

However it severely lacks on other mod cons compared to android midrange phones. An android at this price point will offer a bezelless display, in-display fingerprint, oled display at 120Hz.

The SE's design is really quite dated now. It beats the Android competition at SoC speed but nothing else. In particular the screens on Android are so much better at this price range. And that's the main thing you interact with.

IMO the Android midrangers are much better offers all round. And Apple doesn't even have anything to compete with android budget phones (150-300$). Which usually also offer amoled bezelless displays and 90 or sometimes even 120 Hz.

The segment of people buying an SE want a compact, reliable phone and an affordable entry point into Apple's ecosystem (which includes iMessage, AirPods, Apple Watch, Mac, etc).

They are not obsessing about refresh rates of the displays nor does it really matter that much for their use-cases.

Even the latest and greatest iPhone 15 only has a 60hz display and it's totally fine (as sales, customer satisfaction, and reviews indicate).

SE is great for such user you pointed out, but there are other users they have lower budget and just want a bigger brighter screen like affordable Xiaomi phone. I don't know Apple should sell something for them, maybe not.

Due to AI hype?

If Apple disappears tomorrow, the world will be at a loss.

If Microsoft disappears tomorrow, no one will bat an eyelid.

How do you figure this?

I have no love for Microsoft but they do provide value that most businesses rely on. If they disappeared tomorrow, everyone would feel the pain.

Apple provides just a veneer of convenience. If Apple disappeared tomorrow, only Apple users would be emotionally devastated but otherwise just slightly inconvenienced as they would have to bring forward their next phone/tablet purchase forward by few months and decide which brand to use instead.

But... Blue bubbles!

Yeah I'm sure that none of the users of vscode, github, Excel, or windows will have any problem with moving on. That's always a trivial, frictionless process.

Surely that's a joke ?

If I had to vote the most important piece of Software in history, it wouldn't be Windows, MacOS or Linux.

It would be Excel.

There is a whole world of tech usage outside of Tech or Silicon Valley. It is not an exaggeration to say the world runs on Excel. Most if not all Fortune 2000 relies on it.

And as I learned while doing some consulting gigs at a life sciences multinational, the entry point to VB.NET.

The more advanced users would use VBA, and when that wasn't enough, ask the IT to get Visual Studio with VB.NET configured on their system.

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