

Apple is bigger by market cap than Microsoft, Google, Amazon & Facebook combined - namzo
http://thenextweb.com/shareables/2012/08/29/apple-now-bigger-market-cap-microsoft-google-amazon-facebook-combined/

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neya
Seriously, I'm tired of all this BS. What matters for a real company is how
they stand to innovate, not _how much_ they make. Right now, Apple's strategy
seems to be more of 'litigate' than innovate. What's the use of all this
market cap by exercising unfair, unjust monopoly by abusing the patent system
with trivial, BS patents?

I know a lot of companies that don't make a lot of money but strive for true
innovation (Eg. Tesla Motors). Money is not everything, you know...even a
prostitute makes a lot of money..and that doesn't mean that the prostitute is
_better_ than the average, faithful woman...because she stands for something
true, unlike the prostitute.

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martin_bech
Not innovating? This year they've already delivered the new iPad, the retina
MacBook Pro, and are set to announce and deliver the iPhone 5, the iPad mini,
possibly new iMacs and a TV.

And the last five years they created or helped create: The Smartphone market
The Tablet market The App market The Locationbased market

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neya
EDIT: I see nothing innovative with the list of devices you mentioned - 'The
new iPad', 'Retina MBP', etc. They are just iterations of previous devices
with a higher resolution. The iPad mini is old news, because it is just
following the path the Nexus 7 has set. Nothing innovative here.

Many talk about fragmentation on Android all the time, just wait and see how
much fragmentation, nightmares and hell this Retina resolution would cause to
designers.

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andreyf
Please don't argue like that: <http://www.paulgraham.com/disagree.html>

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neya
Sorry. Edited my original comment. And thanks for that link.

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rodh257
Am I the only one who is tired of being updated what Apples market cap is now
bigger than?

At first they were interesting stats, but in reality it isn't overly useful
information.

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ryanstewart
This. Clearly Apple is a hugely successful company. Are they ultimately more
valuable than all of those companies combined? Not a chance.

The case could be made that those companies are undervalued or that Apple is
overvalued but ultimately the comparison itself isn't very meaningful without
any kind of opinion/analysis behind it.

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eckyptang
For now...

I don't expect this to continue. They've picked some seriously big fights
recently. From prior observation, I have always seen that it only ends bad.

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calciphus
Market cap is a nearly useless measure, especially on a large company.

Apple's stock price is based not on current or even future value, but on being
big and a low-risk investment for mutual funds and other institutional
investors. Can we stop pretending it's a measure of success, value, or
consumer preference?

Let's end this silliness. Do we really believe Apple is more valuable than
Google + Microsoft? Do we really think they impact more users, or have a
greater reach than those two companies combined? Nearly every computer in the
world runs Windows, and Google organizes the world's information and delivers
it to more people than anyone else.

Apple sells phones, and occasionally a computer, but not very many of either
relative to their markets. Roughly 60% of their valuation and revenue come
from a rapidly-aging product in a mature market.

If I were on Apple's board, I'd be terrified of what that stock price
represents - that my job is now only to continue existing. Not to do great
things, not to risk everything on a new product, and not to have vision or
leadership. Just to continue existing.

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imrehg
<tangential>

Let's say one could choose only one of the groups: either have Apple while MS,
Google, Amazon, and FB does not exists, or there's no Apple and the rest is
there.

Would anyone really choose the first scenario?

</tangential>

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ars
It used to be people hated Microsoft, these days it's Apple.

Interesting world.

I fully expect Microsoft to follow the IBM model and focus on services. I'm
sure they'll still make an OS and hardware - IBM does too. But their money
will come from services.

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pwaring
Market cap means nothing though. Facebook's size measured this way was bigger
than all the publicly listed supermarkets in the UK combined, yet Facebook
makes less profit than each of them individually.

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shail
I am pretty sure the post would be true if measured on profits, roughly.

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jamesjguthrie
Yep. Q2 2012 profits:

Apple - 11.6 billion

Microsoft - 5.11 billion

Google - 2.89 billion

Facebook and Amazon both < 1 billion

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stevenwei
That's ridiculous. Apple's recent 2-3 quarters have been SUPER strong, much
more than I would have expected.

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oliwarner
Can anybody say "bubble"?

It's clear to most people Apple isn't worth the money the stock markets assign
it - well over half their cap is investment in the brand.

If they ever do anything to damage that or if they do something even remotely
wrong, a whole lot of people are going to lose a whole lot of money.

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AngryParsley
Is it really so clear? Anyone who thinks AAPL is overvalued (including you)
can make lots of money by shorting or using puts appropriately. People aren't
doing that, so they must not be very confident about Apple's stock price
decreasing.

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oliwarner
You might want to note that I'm not saying Apple is going to implode at
15:02:32, 2nd September, 2012.

I said it depends on Apple doing something wrong and I can't predict when
that'll happen or what it'll be but here are some suggestions: Making the
iPhone 7 out of cheese or Tim Cook farting in the wrong direction. Either way,
if the markets have shown us anything in the past, it doesn't take much at the
moment to send traders into sellmageddon mode.

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npguy
Purely in valuation terms, Apple stock is in no bubble. AAPL is trading at a
P/E of 15.86 GOOG has a P/E of 20.08, for example.

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goggles99
Apple has become the big bully a-hole company that Microsoft used to be
(perhaps even worse). Apple always was the little guy and had it's faithful
niche market. It was the "underdog" that everyone rooted (or at least deep
down felt a bit felt sorry for). Now it has "sold out" and gone mainstream. It
has become a greedy corporate giant and with it's figurehead now out of the
picture - it's image has begun to tarnish even faster.

I predict that dislike or even hatred toward apple will begin to expand until
it equals or surpasses that we see of Microsoft today. It will no longer be
"hip" and once this image slips - Apple will plummet.

This coupled by other tech companies (including all other smartphone
manufacturers) banding together and defeating Apple's garbage patent claims
(they own a patent on a perfect rectangle as part of a UI design?) will spell
an end of a great run for Apple where innovation boomed, but was overcome by
greed -leading to their eventual downfall.

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taligent
Apple does NOT have a patent on rectangles or rounded corners.

And there is no evidence that Apple's image hasn't been tarnished at all in
the eyes of the general public. I see no reason that the iPhone 5 and iPad
Mini will again be record breaking sellers for Apple this year.

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anthonyb
And yet Apple's legal team suggested that Samsung build smartphones and
tablets without rounded corners in order to avoid being sued:

[http://www.pcworld.com/article/245493/apple_to_samsung_dont_...](http://www.pcworld.com/article/245493/apple_to_samsung_dont_make_thin_or_rectangular_tablets_or_smartphones.html)

Legal brief here - section 2-40 (p 10):
[http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/807407/Apple_Reply_Expert_...](http://assets.sbnation.com/assets/807407/Apple_Reply_Expert_declaration.pdf)

