Microsoft vs. Apple: The History of Computing

avi

avi

Level J
Manolution has published an incredibly detailed timeline of events and stock prices throughout the historic battle between Microsoft and Apple.

Despite maintaining dominance of the OS market for over three decades, Microsoft’s stocks continue to trade at or below their first ever public value of $27.50 (at closing on 3/13/1986).

Thanks to Apple’s extremely successful ventures into various hand-held gadget markets (namely the iPod, iPhone and iPad) Apple’s stock continues to rise, trading at over $300 more than that of Microsoft’s as of 6/6/2011.

Manolution predicts the gap in stock pricing between the two companies will continue to grow for the foreseeable future.

Check out the infographic below...

Read more [via BGR]

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Great chart! But it doesn't tell anything. A market cap chart would be much more helpful, because Microsoft has way more shareholders than Apple.

Basically what skyrocketed Apple was the iPad, overtaking Microsoft on market cap in the process.
 
Sub said:
Great chart! But it doesn't tell anything. A market cap chart would be much more helpful, because Microsoft has way more shareholders than Apple.

Basically what skyrocketed Apple was the iPad, overtaking Microsoft on market cap in the process.
Click to expand...
Nope... After the launch of iPhone the apple stock value had hugely increased... :)
 
As of May 2010:

"Over those past five years, Microsoft’s stock has been largely stagnant: it’s up about 4%. Apple’s stock, meanwhile, is up some 550% over that same time frame."

May 26, 2010 Apple has crossed microsoft in market Cap :)

But I feel Microsoft will re gain its lost momentum. Its Biggest blunder is MS Vista when Apple released Iphone at the same time. It lost customers + capital + had to release a new version ( win 7) to regain the lost trades.
 
Hades. said:
Nope... After the launch of iPhone the apple stock value had hugely increased... :)
Click to expand...
Yes, of course, but the skyrocket only began after iPad. It increased hugely after iPhone, but it took 3 years, and there were ups and downs. It even lost all the value and falled back to $100 in 2009. But after iPad the stocks soared from $200 (iPad release) to $350 (iPad 2 release) in a matter of 1 year, that is totally incredible, and there has been very little sign of falling. Look at the graph, you will know what I mean.

The funny thing is that Apple has lesser stockholders than before, but it is just that the fewer stockholders pay a very high price. (Very apt, isn't it!)
 
the conclusions can be drawn anyway, bottom line, is how much revenue and profit they end up making..

for example, the saudi Aramco oil company is valued at 1.4 trillion , thats almost india's whole GDP, but it doesn't figure anywhere in any rich list by market cap..
 
salluks said:
the conclusions can be drawn anyway, bottom line, is how much revenue and profit they end up making..

for example, the saudi Aramco oil company is valued at 1.4 trillion , thats almost india's whole GDP, but it doesn't figure anywhere in any rich list by market cap..
Click to expand...
Of course it doesn't. It's not a public limited company! It's not listed in any stock market. The concept of market cap doesn't apply. It's a government owned company and is actually worth more than $2 trillion. Some estimates go as high as $7 trillion.

Obviously, Apple and Microsoft are nowhere close, in the $200bn to $300bn range, but for publicly listed companies, they are two of the most valued.

But I do agree on the point that revenue and profit does not always impact on share prices and market cap. In terms of revenue, they are virtually neck and neck, while Microsoft has a greater profit for 2010. ($18bn vs $14bn) So, yes, Apple is quite overvalued. On the other hand you have companies like Intel (whose profit is very close to Apple's, but market cap is 1/3rd) or AMD which are completely undervalued. Especially AMD - I mean, <$5bn???
 
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