

Apple closes the revenue, income gap with Microsoft to just $1 billion - miles
http://www.betanews.com/joewilcox/article/Apple-closes-the-revenue-income-gap-with-Microsoft-to-just-1-billion/1272053555

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anujseth
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.

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

And they're beginning to act the part.

~~~
tvon
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.

~~~
jasonlotito
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. =)

~~~
tvon
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.

~~~
jasonlotito
"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.

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

Not that these comparisons are of any value.

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traskjd
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.

~~~
macrael
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.

~~~
csmeder
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.

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

[http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/04/microsoft_windows_p...](http://www.techflash.com/seattle/2010/04/microsoft_windows_pcs_outpace_macs_in_consumer_market.html)

"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.

~~~
evgen
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"...]

~~~
jasonlotito
"["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. =)

------
Tichy
Peanuts

