I was never talking about the enterprise. The IT dept. mentality extends even to the consumer market. That's what I was referring to.
Apple has never been a major player in the enterprise, and they aren't now. There are others that fill that role. As far as I'm concerned others can continue to fill that role forever. Obviously, I'm just thinking as a consumer here. Apple addresses Joe Average's concerns, so fair enough. I'm pretty sure what enterprise presence they do have it well looked after, but I have little to no experience in that area.
Apple plays in the consumer market. They're currently worth more than Microsoft and Intel put together, and have $70 billion or so burning a hole in their pocket. They sell record numbers of nearly everything they make, quarter for quarter. Their Mac business has outpaced the PC market for more quarters than most people can remember.
(Where iPads are already making an impression.)
You're trying to create a problem which doesn't actually exist, but more likely we simply had a misunderstanding, probably because I wasn't being clear.
Apple trades just under 16 times earnings, Intel trades just under 10 times earnings and Microsoft trades just under 10 times earnings. A good bit of reason behind Apple's market capitalization is investor sentiment and as such it has a higher PE Ratio. From a conservative investor's standpoint they are overbought. You want an even bigger overbought company - Google has a PE Ratio just under 19 times earnings.
Microsoft has 50 billion cash on hand, Apple has just under 30 billion cash on hand and Google has just under 37 billion cash on hand.
I am not here to give you a lesson in investing, but come on man could you at least post proper numbers?
And as for your, "I was never talking about the enterprise" market this is what you wrote:
Time to get with reality, poindexter. In some circles the regular IT establishment *does not* dictate the course of tech.
My comments to you were in relation to that. Newsflash you're not the regular IT establishment you're the consumer market in the IT world.
Global enterprise spending in tech will be at least two trillion this year if not two and a half trillion. Unless Apple has any real plans to bridge the gap between their enterprise mobile market (iPhones iPads) and their really nonexistent enterprise server and workstation market - (they don't even sell real servers anymore) growth will not be as cataclysmic over the next decade as it has been in the past five years.
If Apple thinks it can bully enterprises as well as consumers into this App Store model then the little enterprise segment of the market they have will disappear. (Meaning the three guys in the design department using Photoshop on their Macbook Pros)
Jobs is a visionary, but its my opinion once he is gone the company will make the effort to go after the enterprise market share they are so severely lacking. I am willing to bet he is the roadblock to that and I am willing to bet they will put more focus on it with the next Chairman and CEO.