Microsoft Passes Apple to Become Most Valuable U.S. Company

[Anandc]

Apple is doing really well when it comes to technology, customer service etc.

It's an alarm that prices need to be corrected. Currently Apple prices for iPhones are blown out and doesn't justify either. Specially when they give 5W charger with iPhone XS Max. Things like these must be avoided at all cost.

Too much of profit margin is not bad, after all it also cost a lot for research and development. But majority of customers are not at their ease to buy iPhones only because of the price and there is such a huge competition between the Chinese Android manufacturers that they are gaining the market share with all the latest features at a fraction price of iPhone. Sooner or later iPhone's market is going to go further down like they are in India.

It's not about the country having money or not, iPhone is not able to justify the price anymore. It has the technology but USD1099 for an iPhone XS Max which doesn't have the best camera, no split screen apps, no fast charger and the worst part not having all the features in majority International Countries. Features like Apple Pay, News App, Apple Maps Navigation etc. It's too incomplete for a USD1099 smartphone!

Don't get me wrong, I love iPhones & iOS but that doesn't it's 100% perfect. Apple needs to step up and bring all the features in every country and that's how you will gain market share. One of the biggest advantage Apple has is it's eco system. Pull the customers into your eco system and they will be with you because you do have quality which others lack.

 

[notabadname]

Good for MS and competition in general. But stocks are so volatile, it is not the greatest of measures. Investors are so fickle. This will bounce the other was again I bet. The continual moan on this site regarding the declining Apple product portfolio is the worst part of this announcement -because now we get to hear the moan even more. If Tim Cook lacks vision and originality, so don’t the endless posts proclaiming how this wouldn’t happen under Steve Job’s watch- the visionary responsible for the iPhone and the iPad moving to the front of the line over Macs in the first place. He’s been dead for 7 years, and Apple has performed awesomely - by every business model. Apple, and Apple stocks are going to be just fine.

 

[Yazooble]

I can't afford to play in Apple's world anymore. Cost of living has gone up too much and my salary hasn't kept up so luxuries like Apple stuff are going the wayside. I hate to say it because I've always loved their stuff, but I think my next laptop will be a PC and my next phone will be a droid. It's been nice while it lasted.

If only Apple appreciated this sentiment (which is wide, wide spread) a little sooner... They way overestimated how much they could squeeze middle America.

 

[Apple Corps]

As someone who's hated Microsoft for decades, it's well deserved.

The Microsoft of the Gates era was cutthroat. But the Microsoft of the Ballmer years was all defense and became a cancer to the tech community. Ballmer saw everything as about protecting the Windows/Office monopolies, so he'd spend tons of time trying to cripple emerging technologies through strategies like "Embrace Extend Extinguish". They'd sabotage open source projects and avoid supporting anything that helped applications work cross platform. The web was a threat. They kept developing stuff like Silverlight or wouldn't improve IE deliberately to make websites less cross-compatible.

Why? Because if things were cross-compatible, you wouldn't need Windows. This was a profitable short-term strategy. But it simply meant that Microsoft would also miss every tech boat. Web apps? Too focused on undermining it instead of becoming a leading provider of web technologies. Smartphones? Ballmer missed it completely. Etc, etc.

Microsoft under Ballmer was like if Steve Jobs was focused on saving the iPod and therefore never made a phone. And Ballmer slowly whittled away his lead.


Microsoft under Nadella is willing to experiment with new products regardless of how it might affect their other products, and it feels like a totally new company.

Very good commentary on MS and the Gates / Balmer leadership. Would you extend your thoughts on Cook / current Apple? Note my signature of several years now.

 

[iPhonemaster5S]

Apple shouldn't be entry level. But their products aren't 200% better either.

Their greed will be the end of them. And I'm a big Apple guy. Heck, I bought the first gen Apple Watch, have an iPhone 8 Plus, own Macs and Apple TVs (multiple generations). Here's the thing...I'm not going to buy another Apple Watch, because if it only works with iPhone and the iPhone's going to cost $1500, forget it. They will not hold me hostage. I have Apple Music, but I could easily switch to Spotify like overnight. Apple TV is great, but Roku works great too. Windows 10 isn't great, but it isn't awful either. And I have money to spend on Apple Products, but they aren't worth the delta anymore. That's why Apple's stock is getting pounded now.

Exactly! Why can't people see that it's not the issue of having the money or not for Apples ever increasing prices. It's the fact that these devices and laptops are becoming more expensive and aren't worth it anymore. As my father used to say "no one ever got wealthy by spending when they didn't need to". I think there's a lot of truth to that and when it comes to Apple products they aren't really worth it as much as they once were, especially with some great competition.

 

[nvmls]

True. Apple had never been the most valuable U.S company when Steve Jobs was alive.

"Because that was the best thing consumers could wish for"

-Warren Buffet

 

[Packers1958]

In 10 years, AI will be running Apple. Get to work my human slaves.

 

[Baymowe335]

Seriously, do any of you own stocks? Have you ever owned a stock?

Stocks go up and down, on average of 50% from high to low in a 52wk period.

Apple was valued at $1.1T just about 6 weeks ago. Do you really think anything has changed? Stocks move for all kinds of reasons and the latest is based on speculative articles surrounding Apple's supply chain, unit sales reporting, and fake news about iPhone production cuts that we get every year.

Once APPLE posts numbers that show the story has changed, we can start panicking. Until then, look around the stock market.

FB
GOOGL
NFLX
AMZN
NVDA
AMD

All these stocks have been crushed. This isn't an AAPL story. Welcome to owning stocks. The people who are good buy during times of speculation to the downside. The BUSINESS is doing great, as we just saw in the reported Q4 numbers.
[doublepost=1543259440][/doublepost]

Apple behaved like a monopoly a little too hard. Now this is the result.

What is? A short term price drop that is literally 6 weeks old? THIS is the end of Apple? Seriously, do you own stocks?

 

[78Bandit]

This is a result of 1) A general downturn in the overall market, pretty much into correction territory, and 2) rampant rumors of production cuts in the XR, unmet goals in the XS and XS Max, and a restarting of the X production to meet minimum screen purchase requirements.

Can't do anything about #1, however #2 will be a temporary setback if Apple can again hit the high side of its Q1 guidance. Apple doesn't address rumors as those tend to generate short-term fluctuations in the stock price. They let quarterly and annual results speak for themselves.

If Apple beats the high end of guidance and shows decent revenue growth in the iPhone segment then you can expect the stock price to bounce back handsomely.

On the other hand, if Q1 results are lackluster you can expect further pullbacks in the stock price as investors start looking at Apple as being in a mature market.

 

[haydn!]

Considering it’s down the best part of 20% in a month or so, how long before shareholders call for change in strategy/approach?

 

[Unity451]

I feel like I've seen this before...

 

[Pangalactic]

The problem with Apple is that they've moved from being an expensive-but-high-quality tech company for everyone to a luxury niche brand like Vertu where design, price and the Apple logo trumps every other aspect of the laptop like reliability or usability.

 

[Unity451]

I feel like I've seen this before...

 

[1050792]

Are you implying that it wouldn’t have been either if Steve had still been in control? If so, that seems like a pretty ridiculous argument to make. Cook had the advantage of taking the reigns when the smartphone adoption rate (and Apple’s profits) was accelerating very rapidly. The only reason Jobs wasn’t there when Apple became the most valuable company is because of his early death.

I'm not implying anything. I'm stating facts based on the reality of how things happened.

 

[robbyx]

Apple made $60B profit in 2018.

Microsoft made $23B in profit in 2018.

Apple is a much cheaper stock relative to their earnings. Stocks go up and down. Apple is the stronger company and the stock is buy now.

Don’t bring logic into this! Apple stock price is, and pretty much always has been, driven by emotion. Those who tune that out, however, have done very well. My dad is sitting on a pile of shares with a $0.07 cost basis.

 

[Baymowe335]

Well deserved, after two decades of using Apple laptops I find myself more tempted than ever to switch to a Thinkpad or Surface.
Both because Macbooks have changed to no longer suit my needs, and also because Windows 10 and the hardware OEMs seem to have improved a lot lately. And just imagine retrofitting a 1 TB SSD for $200!

Microsoft isn't where it is because of consumer electronics.

 

[rtomyj]

Good. The sooner Apple hits the ground with their insane pricing practices, the sooner we get better products at lower prices.

People here are insane! Microsoft (along with Goog and Sammy) have also been pricing their hardware more on the expensive side. The surface 6 is around 2k for a gig of storage. That’s right 2k for a SURFACE. Pixel 3XL is more than $900. For a PIXEL. The new note is $1000. A SAMSUNG phone.

The thing is. With my iPhone I get 5 years of updates. Pixel and the Note will get 2 if they’re lucky.

The surface is running Windows so that’s already a handicap.

Also if we really want to be fair. The Pixel Book starts at $1000 and can go up to $1600. That’s one expensive browser.

But I’m sure you knew all this when you made your very useful, memetastic comment. And didn’t make it for the likes of internet nerds.

 

[toph2toast]

If Apple would unleash the power of the iPad by running full Mac OS and not iOS, they would clobber Microsoft with that move alone. Come on Apple cause you could be heading down!

I couldn't agree more. To me its a waste of a powerful device when its running iOS and not MacOS.

 

[BGarza]

Not throwing shade towards the XR, but wouldn’t it have been grand if you didn’t have to compromise on a device being a little too big? I would have bought 5 iPhone SE’s for my family this season if they just left the small footprint of the chassis the same, and added the “X” form factor. Now I find myself searching for reviews on the new Palm...

The XR is fantastic! Other than being a bit big for me, it's the best phone I've ever had. I was really hesitant to switch from my preferred SE, but I'll be first to admit — I was wrong. The larger screen and gesture-based interface is absolutely fantastic! I find myself trying to use the gestures on my SE and then I remember I need to use the Home button instead. The gestures really do work perfectly.

 

[ob81]

Keep in mind that we are talking billions. Billions. Even if they dropped to 50 billions, it would still be 50 billions.

 

[0815]

As someone who's hated Microsoft for decades, it's well deserved.

The Microsoft of the Gates era was cutthroat. But the Microsoft of the Ballmer years was all defense and became a cancer to the tech community. Ballmer saw everything as about protecting the Windows/Office monopolies, so he'd spend tons of time trying to cripple emerging technologies through strategies like "Embrace Extend Extinguish". They'd sabotage open source projects and avoid supporting anything that helped applications work cross platform. The web was a threat. They kept developing stuff like Silverlight or wouldn't improve IE deliberately to make websites less cross-compatible.

Why? Because if things were cross-compatible, you wouldn't need Windows. This was a profitable short-term strategy. But it simply meant that Microsoft would also miss every tech boat. Web apps? Too focused on undermining it instead of becoming a leading provider of web technologies. Smartphones? Ballmer missed it completely. Etc, etc.

Microsoft under Ballmer was like if Steve Jobs was focused on saving the iPod and therefore never made a phone. And Ballmer slowly whittled away his lead.


Microsoft under Nadella is willing to experiment with new products regardless of how it might affect their other products, and it feels like a totally new company.

this perfectly sums it up. I hated the Microsoft under Ballmer - I switch to Apple when Vista came out and never looked back until recently. But MS is all of the sudden cross platform and has interesting things to offer. Apple took away many things I liked and got used to over the years (probably not enough margin). I used to constantly update my iPhones and iPads (iMacs always lasted me long and I always got good money for them after many years) ... I was excited this year for the new iPad, but when I saw the prices for the new one I got less excited. Plan was to give my current one to my son (who broke his) and get the new one - instead I ordered a refurbished last year model to give to him. I am just not willing to pay those prices anymore - I can't justify it anymore.

 

[Rogifan]

According to Yahoo, Apple is still slightly more valuable right now. Isn’t the bigger story how wrong the tech and financial press were when they claimed Amazon would be the first to $1T? Right now Amazon is at $765B.

 

[Baymowe335]

Considering it’s down the best part of 20% in a month or so, how long before shareholders call for change in strategy/approach?

Long term shareholders aren't stupid, so they don't think a 20% drop in a 6 week period means anything other than stocks go up and down. Apple traded at $150 in the last year.

Tim Cook just delivered the strongest year ever and Q4 results of 20% revenue growth and 41% eps growth.

Nothing but speculation and overall market turmoil has driven the stock down lately. Apple just told us how great the business is doing. You just have to pay attention.

 

[Rocketman]

I believe they are both buying back stock, but Apple on a larger scale. I suggested AAPL go private at $88. They should reconsider right now near the bottom of the correction.

 

[dazz87]

Next year iphone will start off at $1999.99..........