Apple Could Beat Microsoft in Revenue This Quarter
By Ed Oswald | Monday, July 19, 2010 at 11:46 am
In terms of market capitalization, Apple has been ahead of Microsoft since May. In terms of real dollars made however, Redmond still is king. That may not be true for much longer: Apple is making strides that could put it ahead of Microsoft in terms of revenue, and highlight the company’s decade long rise from the ashes.
According to Fortune, analysts polled by Reuters expect Apple’s earnings revenues — which it reports Tuesday — to come in at about $14.62 billion for the quarter. On the other hand, analysts expect Microsoft to report $15.26 billion in revenues when it gives its quarterly numbers on Thursday.
Apple seems to have a habit of beating Wall Street expectations rather handily (last quarter, revenue numbers were some $1 billion higher than expected). So does Microsoft — but not to the extent that Apple manages to do. This all means it is a very real possibility that the Cupertino company may have made more money overall for the first time in history.
Does this really mean anything though? I’d argue it does. What it shows is Apple is a company that still appparently has upward potential, while Microsoft continues to be mired in the morass that it seems to have been in financially for much of the past decade. Look at some of the graphs in the Fortune article and you’ll see why.
Apple is certainly the darling of the tech press — we all can agree on that. But the data is now finally catching up to the hype that some of us journalists have heaped upon it I think. What remains to be seen is if there is anything that Microsoft can do in order to stay competitive.
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July 19th, 2010 at 12:25 pm
Ed, you mixed "revenue" and "earnings" (with similar numbers) in the 2nd graf.
July 19th, 2010 at 8:13 pm
Caught it, thanks!
July 20th, 2010 at 4:49 am
Microsoft has their 2 monopolies: 100% of profit in office software and 3rd party PC operating systems, but in everything else they make no profit. They have been stuck there for over a decade. A decade ago, Apple was barely profitable, but now they make more than 50% of the profit in their 4 main markets: mobile phones (52%), tablets (90%), media players (90%), and high-end ($999+) PC's (90%). Whether or not the world will need more Microsoft Windows or Microsoft Office is debatable, but there is no doubt that mobile phones, tablets, media players, and high-end PC's are current and growing and relevant to the 21st century. Apple's profitability is not just good for them, it's also squeezing their competitors. Nokia had to ship about 10 times the phones as Apple last year to make less profit.
August 20th, 2010 at 10:01 pm
MSFT makes almost 4 times the profit apple does. Unless Apple starts printing money I don't think they are going to top them. Most people don't even think about what MSFT does. They make the OS for the server runs almost every real web page as well as the SQL database. With that comes the tools to create them.
If you had one share of Microsoft when the opened their doors you could use that one share to buy about 6 shares of Apple today. Microsoft has split 288:1. Apple and Microsoft aren't even on the same level.
Don't forget that Apple was going to go bankrupt until Bill Gates invested money in them so he wouldn't have a monopoly. That is like someone helping you up and cleaning you off just so they can kick your ass again.