
Apple Now Worth More Than Google - sant0sk1
http://www.macrumors.com/2008/08/13/apple-now-worth-more-than-google/
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martythemaniak
That's rather meaningless, but its interesting to compare the competitors
there: Apple, RIM and Nokia.

Apple and RIM seem to be on par - Apple is valued at ~2x compared to RIM, but
then its also much bigger company (in terms of revenues, employees, products,
operations etc).

Nokia seems a bit weak in this light - they're a behemoth in the cell phone
market and yet they operate on much thinner margins and aren't valued that
high.

Anyway, I am still kicking myself for not buying RIM stock when I was beta
testing the original Pearl. Back then I had a hunch they were undervalued and
a septupling of the stock price would have done me well ;)

~~~
ajross
Company valuations are growth bets. Nokia is already holds a huge share of an
almost-saturated industry. There isn't much room for growth in their core
business area, and they don't have a history of growing into new areas of
revenue like some of the other companies on the list (Google and Apple
especially).

FWIW, Apple and Google are both overvalued. :)

[edit: I should say _technology_ company valuations are growth bets.
Corporations in stable industries are more often valued by earnings, unless
something weird is going on (acquisition talk, etc...).]

~~~
netcan

       FWIW, Apple and Google are both overvalued. :)   

Well as you said: 'growth bets'.

Google are a long bet, I reckon. So far they're proven for putting out good
products. But to be worth the money they need to monetise at least some of
these. Up to now we have one success in that department: Adwords, which is
extremely well thought out. But it's still just one point. They may not get
another multi-$b cow. Adwords even if they manage to fix content ads, would be
pressed to find that much growth (but 100%-200% is not out of the question)

Apple may be justified. There is the old mantra of 'be very good at 2 things'
instead of 'be the best at 1 thing.' Apple can do:

1- Software

2- Hardware

3- Marketing / Product Launches

4- Creating Markets & doing deals that put a nice chunk of it in their pockets
(Itunes, App store)

Take any 2 and you have a potential player in a lot of markets theat may grow
very big.

\- TVish markets (some future apple TV?)

\- bookish markets (Kindle?)

\- thin clients (If the free with internet accesss PCs happen, who better then
apple to make them? Nokia?)

\- gaming (could happen?)

\- GPSish markets (you never know where this might go)

\- In-Vehicle stuff (Ipod type thing for music & aircon & stuff in your new
BMW?)

You almost expect apple to grab a piece of any consumer electronics that come
up. Problem is they seem to be running on momentum. Not sure that'll last
forever.

~~~
netcan
To add to that: How many of <http://ycombinator.com/ideas.html> could be
cracked by Apple?

I think 1, 2, 17, 27, they do, probably will do or are uniquely positioned to
do.

They could have as good a crack as any another half dozen.

Come to think of it: "17. New payment methods" might be one for Google. I
mean, the key(s) seem like they might be around millions of users with
accounts & easy, frictionless interface. Google checkout's not really changing
the word though.

~~~
aneesh
It'll take a lot to beat eBay (who owns PayPal) in this space.

> "key(s) seem like they might be around millions of users with accounts &
> easy, frictionless interface"

Fwiw, Yahoo & Microsoft both have way more users than Google. But Google
probably has most of the early-adopter crowd.

~~~
netcan
Users was probably the wrong term. I meant 'accounts'.

~~~
aneesh
That's what I meant. There are actually more Yahoo! accounts and Live accounts
than GMail accounts.

