

Microsoft Still More Profitable Than Apple — Barely - ericmsimons
http://techcrunch.com/2011/01/27/apple-microsoft-profits/

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robryan
It's amazing how many blog posts tech crunch come out with that just take a
bunch of statistics, comment on how they compare and speculate on a future
trend. Seems to be a good backup for bloggers when there is nothing to write
about.

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ericmsimons
I noticed that too. Everyone likes hearing speculation...and then disagreeing
with it ;P

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edge17
i'm confused. are Apple and Microsoft competitors like Coke and Pepsi? as in,
is this even a worthy comparison?

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brudgers
Typical Siegler - Microsoft has higher profits on lower revenue than Apple =
Apple wins again.

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ugh
Where does the author say that “Apple wins again”?! I’m a bit befuddled by
your interpretation of the article which seems to be mostly based on your
prejudices about the author.

Apple is actually growing faster than Microsoft and it is not in any way
strange that Apple, as a hardware and software company, has worse margins than
Microsoft, that has always been the case. Here is an illustrative chart,
showing all that: [http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-microsoft-
ap...](http://www.businessinsider.com/chart-of-the-day-microsoft-apple-
revenue-income-2010-10)

The article just reports those facts and includes the author’s prediction that
Apple’s earnings will overtake Microsoft’s soon, probably in the next quarter.
That’s not at all unreasonable or unrealistic.

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kenjackson
But it is typical Siegler. He had a post comparing MS revenue against Apple
revenue talking about how Apple had surpassed MS revenue -- completely
ignoring the fact that you generally don't compare revenue across industries,
for example, Ford makes nearly double the revenue of Apple.

But I do think Apple does stand a good chance to surpass MS. But I do think
the consumer space is also a fickle one, especially the phone market. If they
do one release of a "meh" phone or tablet, and Android progresses, they could
see their profits literally cut in half in a year (see Sony for how you go
from +$2B to -$2B in one year).

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ugh
People compare Microsoft and Apple. They just do. (See: Chart I linked to.)
That’s not in any way typical of Siegler. And his prediction is also nothing
special at all. It’s just wrong to attack this particular author about this
particular question.

It’s not typical Siegler. It’s typical many people. Siegler holds a common
position on this particular issue.

The popular trope that Siegler is defending Apple despite obvious evidence to
the contrary which the first commenter seems to be alluding to is certainly
not true when it comes to this particular issue. (It is true on other
occasions but not this time.)

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kenjackson
I'm not saying Siegler is unique. There is a whole cottage industry of people
who compare Apple to MS about things that have no merit. Like I said before,
comparing revenue across industries is just stupid. It makes no sense. But
there are some, like Siegler, who will do it. Of those, it is typical of them,
and Siegler is in that class.

There's an old saying that if you don't know the history of the author, you
don't know what you're reading.

Lets look at the title of the story for when Apple released their earnings,
"Apple’s Insane Q1 ’11: $26.7 Billion Revenue, $6 Billion Profit; 7.33 Million
iPads, 16.24"

He's just an obvious hack. But it gets page views. I think he probably makes a
decent living doing it. No complaints about that. But I do think that if you
are actually getting news from him, you're getting it from the Fox News of the
tech sector. John Gruber is even a little embarrassed at how obvious his bias
is.

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ugh
But Siegler is comparing profits, first and foremost. He doesn’t say to look
only at the revenue, he clearly recognizes the importance of profits. I could
understand you if he had completely ignored profits, but he did not. Profits
were the whole point of this article and it’s completely reasonable to compare
profits between Apple and Microsoft. (Isn’t the whole premise of this
continued horse race coverage that the revenue milestone doesn’t really count
and that you still have to look at how profits develop?)

Oh, and Apple’s Q1 earnings are actually insane. I don’t know how you could
find fault with that particular headline. I think no one could dispute that
Apple’s Q1 results were extremely impressive.

Can’t we attack people for what they actually say, not for what we think they
are saying?

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kenjackson
If Apple's profits were insane, and Microsoft's higher -- what does that make
Microsoft's revenue? How about when MS had even higher profits last year... MG
had no article about the "insane" MS profits.

And he NEVER says that revenue don't count. When Apple surpassed MS in revenue
he says, and I quote, "Naturally, it’s important to note that Microsoft still
has a lead in profit, $5.41 billion to $4.31 billion, but that’s because one
is mainly a software maker (huge margins), while the other is mainly a
hardware maker (lower margins)."

So lets be clear, he's saying that earnings need a qualifier due to margins
(which is absurd in itself), but he NEVER NEVER says anything about revenue
models not being comparable given that Apple is a hardware company and MS is a
software company. Do you know who makes more revenue than Apple -- HP, yet MG
has never mentioned another hardware company in his revenue posts.

I think you'd have to blind to see how MG selectively omits certain key facts
from his "articles", in order to create a specific pro-Apple anti-MS spin.

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ugh
No, you have to have massive prejudices to see what Siegler writes in that
way.

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kenjackson
Here's another typical Siegler headline, "Is Android Surging Only Because
Apple Is Letting It?"

Not surprisingly, no article about how Android blew past Nokia and Apple in Q4
2010 (already past Apple before that, but YoY).

It's like watching a basketball game where the announcer only calls baskets
made by one team. And then goes on and on about how team Apple just BARELY
lost. But actually if you look at timeouts, team Apple used fewer timeouts, so
if the game was to minimize timeout usage, Team Apple actually won!!!

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ugh
That’s not what Siegler wrote at all. You are twisting his words.

I’m making no claims about other articles by Siegler and don’t want to defend
them. He tends to say incredibly stupid or one-sided things about Apple very
often. It’s just that I cannot find any fault with this particular article.

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kenjackson
That's how spin works. You don't outright lie, but you "spin" the facts. Fox
News doesn't work by lying -- it works by selective reporting. It's not that
most of their news reports are lies, but in their totality they have a very
clear bias.

The fact that I can find, literally about 10 positive articles written about
Apple in the past few months by MG, and maybe one (borderline) about MS, is
quite telling. Despite the fact that MS generated larger profits than the
"Insane" profits of Apple.

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ugh
What, specifically, is wrong with this article? That’s the important question
for me. I don’t care about reading tea leaves. Siegler likes to write about
Apple? So what, who cares, why does it matter? Do you really believe he should
cover Microsoft and Apple equally?

There is no need to turn a harmless disagreement into a pointless attack.

This applies to Fox News and everything else equally. I will not attack
anything someone says just because I think they frequently say stupid stuff.

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brudgers
> _"Do you really believe he should cover Microsoft and Apple equally?"_

Of course not. But he's not a beat reporter. He editorializes his reporting to
promote Apple as he did in this case - which is what makes it typical Siegler.
How is one to hold your position to be genuine when despite your saying that
this article is an exception to his typical bias towards Apple, you have
defended the objectivity of every other piece of Siegler's writing mentioned?

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ugh
Because saying that Apple’s Q1 results were “insane” is not actually insane. I
won’t defend every single piece but I will defend that particular headline and
the linked article. I won’t go hunting for pieces I disagree with because I
usually don’t read anything by Siegler. He often is a biased hack, you know.
But not in this particular piece and not as far as the headline of Siegler’s
article on Apple’s Q1 results is concerned.

How could saying that Apple’s Q1 results were “insane” ever be considered
biased? Just look at those results! They were insane in every way!

