Apple Earns Sixth Place on 'Top 100 Global Technology Leaders' List

[otternonsense]

Why are you not sure it was resolved? Haven't heard anything to the contrary...

FaceID is a technology with a lot of potential to grow down the road. Today, we have filters, Animoji, and some apps that use the tech for games. You'll say it's worthless, but it's getting great feedback. There are entire ad campaigns based around it. Do you really think this won't be greatly expanded upon, perhaps with much more useful features, in the future? Don't you agree it has more ability and potential than a fingerprint scanner?

Where did I ever purport that it's "worthless"?!?

I only called it half baked (something that could also be said about iOS 11 in its entirety, but that's another subject). Please don't pull me into a loaded question. Of course it's got potential, it's just not as convincing *yet*.

 

[rafark]

Apple should be above 'Alphabet'.

If there's one Company that can be above Apple, that is google. Google is not only Android, which per se powers pretty much all the smartphones on the planet that are not iPhone, but is also search, maps, ads, and much more. Apple impacts only people with a device of theirs, while pretty much every single person on earth that has access to technology is dependant on a google product to some extent.

 

[fhall1]

Everything I read from industry insiders says that IBM is in trouble.....no way they should even be on the list, much less placed ahead of Apple.

 

[AndyMacAndMic]

Everything I read from industry insiders says that IBM is in trouble.....no way they should even be on the list, much less placed ahead of Apple.

If the top 100 only was about companies who are the least in trouble, you might have a point. But it isn't.

 

[Snowshiro]

Microsoft is on top? Seriously? And one of the metrics is investor confidence? They must know something I don't. I can understand the others (especially Alphabet), but I don't see how MS's current strategy is paying big dividends.

You know what, you're absolutely right. They do know something you don't. And here it is in a simple chart:

https://imgur.com/a/GBD2T

Look at those 5 tech companies. Apple derives almost two-thirds of its entire revenue from a single product. If they make a misstep and the iPhone starts to decline, that's a huge problem. To be fair, some of the others are even worse, most notably Facebook.

Now look at Microsoft's chart. Microsoft is brilliantly diversified into a whole bunch of different sectors and even their largest earner accounts for little more than a 28% of their revenue. They can afford for one area to suffer weakness and still be highly profitable. That's what investor confidence is about. Not only that, but Microsoft can grow each of these areas independently whereas iPhone growth has almost levelled off in the past couple of years. Finally Microsoft has made huge strides in cloud services in the past couple of years which is seen as one of the biggest opportunities in the next decade. Apple has no cloud strategy at all. In fact iCloud itself runs on Azure (Microsoft's cloud) and AWS (Amazon's cloud).

So, for sure Apple is a stellar stock that will continue to perform well for the next few years, but if you want to bet the house on a company that will still be near the top in 20 years time, Microsoft is the the safe option. And that's what investors see.

 

[Fox8J]

They'd be #1 if Steve was still running the show.

 

[AppleScruff1]

Thomson Reuters explained that it assessed each company using a 28-data-point algorithm to "objectively identify organizations with the fortitude for the future in today's complex business environment."

Meaningless list. Who pays for this garbage?

I bet if Apple was at the top it wouldn't be a meaningless list nor would it be garbage, would it?

 

[I7guy]

You know what, you're absolutely right. They do know something you don't. And here it is in a simple chart:

https://imgur.com/a/GBD2T

Look at those 5 tech companies. Apple derives almost two-thirds of its entire revenue from a single product. If they make a misstep and the iPhone starts to decline, that's a huge problem. To be fair, some of the others are even worse, most notably Facebook.

Now look at Microsoft's chart. Microsoft is brilliantly diversified into a whole bunch of different sectors and even their largest earner accounts for little more than a 28% of their revenue. They can afford for one area to suffer weakness and still be highly profitable. That's what investor confidence is about. Not only that, but Microsoft can grow each of these areas independently whereas iPhone growth has almost levelled off in the past couple of years. Finally Microsoft has made huge strides in cloud services in the past couple of years which is seen as one of the biggest opportunities in the next decade. Apple has no cloud strategy at all. In fact iCloud itself runs on Azure (Microsoft's cloud) and AWS (Amazon's cloud).

So, for sure Apple is a stellar stock that will continue to perform well for the next few years, but if you want to bet the house on a company that will still be near the top in 20 years time, Microsoft is the the safe option. And that's what investors see.

Except that windows, surface, office, server and azure are dependent on one product.

 

[jayducharme]

Microsoft is brilliantly diversified into a whole bunch of different sectors and even their largest earner accounts for little more than a 28% of their revenue.

Never knew that. Thanks!

 

[AxiomaticRubric]

Your logic is skewed a bit. Of the top 6 companies on the list, Apple is the richest by revenue. So according to your theory above Apple should be #1 because they have the most money to spread around. Being #6 here is like being #4 in an Olympic event.

Don't miss the point though. The rich and powerful enjoy patting each others' backs in the most visible, public way possible. It's a form of gloating over us lesser mortals.