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from the the-tide-goes-in-and-the-tide-goes-out dept.
The New York Times published a story that states the obvious for anyone who has studied economics, that Apple's dominant position today is not permanent. They may be very clever and innovative thanks to the spirit (and curse) of Steve Jobs lingering around 1 Infinite Loop, but all fame is fleeting.
In a few short years, Apple has become the biggest company on the planet by market value—so big that it dwarfs every other one on the stock market. It dominates the Standard & Poor’s 500-stock index as no other company has in 30 years.
Apple’s market capitalization—the value of all of the shares of its stock—is more than $758 billion, greater than any other company’s. Yet the Wall Street consensus is that Apple is still having a growth spurt. In fact, if Apple’s watches, phones, laptops and other gadgets and services keep generating favorable publicity—and if its quarterly earnings report on Monday is as strong as the market expects it to be—there’s a reasonable chance that Apple’s value will keep swelling. Not far down the road, it might even reach the $1 trillion level that some hedge funds predict.
Yet, IBM was once a huge computer company, the one to beat, not unlike what Microsoft became.
IBM thrived for years afterward, but just as [Steve] Jobs had predicted, it turned out to be vulnerable to disruptive change, as all big companies are. For decades now, IBM has engaged in a sometimes painful transition, and as it revealed in its quarterly earnings report last week, it is still hurting: Its revenues have declined and it has endured wrenching business shifts.
My take on this is pretty straightforward. I own IBM stock; I don't own Apple except in the form of an S&P mutual fund. While I use Apple computers and like them, I have little faith in Apple's long-term future, whereas I think IBM will be around and relevant for much longer once they get their business properly reoriented.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Monday April 27 2015, @03:33AM
Apple has 2 things going for it, where IBM had (and still has, to a degree) only one. Both IBM and Apple have legions of people that will buy anything they make without a thought. Everyone has heard the expression "nobody ever got fired for buying IBM". Both companies have the same sort of followers, although they're very disparate groups. When the IBM followers die off (most are older) they'll be in a lot of trouble. This is too bad, as although IBM makes very poor software and overpriced, underpowered hardware, they do a lot of *exceptional* research and are one of the few companies that still do it.
In addition to the cult of buyers, Apple also has the advantage of getting free advertising from every news and tech organization on the planet. How many articles did you see on the news about any of the Android Wear watches? Now how many about the Apple watch? The media people were Apple fans long before the iPhone. They used Apple for scripts, etc, they used Apple for video editing, and the used Apple for sound. They were the original fanboys. It's hard to compete with that, even with superior products.
What Apple has going against them is a lot of people that don't like they way they do business (lawsuits, arrogance, etc), don't like the platform lock-in attempts (hey, did we mention IBM earlier?), lack of choice, and just general annoyance with hearing about them all the time.
It'll be interesting to see how all of these factors play out in the long run ... it's way too complex for me to even wager a guess at when it will end.
(Score: 2) by captain normal on Monday April 27 2015, @06:10AM
One thing IBM has going for them is a huge quiver of patents.
When life isn't going right, go left.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Nerdfest on Monday April 27 2015, @09:51AM
Many of which are actually worthy of being patents.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday April 27 2015, @12:02PM
When the IBM followers die off (most are older) they'll be in a lot of trouble.
They've already pivoted out of the USA and fired almost everyone in the USA and are doing fantastic in China and India, virtually all employees of IBM at this time are Chinese or Indian outside the international sales offices which are usually staffed with locals (The only Americans still working for IBM, aside from a handful of remaining rounding errors, are local salespeople). They'll be OK.
Also follow the money. Long term economic effects are to take all the money from everyone and give it to a couple rich old white men in FIRE sector jobs, for a couple generations now. If the entire city of Peoria hates IBM, that really doesn't matter because none of them have any real money or jobs anymore, or if they somehow do, that'll soon be fixed by gov policy and corporate mergers. On the other hand, if one old white guy at Citibank (for example) in a VP office likes IBM, thats all they really need, because he's going to be the only person in the country with any money soon enough. Follow the money. Again they'll be OK.
Something IBM does lose out on, is the macro-economic effect of abandoning the concept of an economy as being productive and converting over to a bubble oriented economy over the past couple decades, that means all "activity" is compressed into the peaks of the bubble, and nothing moves slower than a giant bureaucracy right when they need to move fast at bubble peaks. So a century or so of bubble economy will slowly eventually kill IBM. But they're good for awhile.
(Score: 3, Informative) by urza9814 on Monday April 27 2015, @06:17PM
Based on how often we have on-site support techs from IBM around here, I'd have to say that's complete BS. They've clearly still got a number of technical folks here in the US.
(Score: 1) by nitehawk214 on Monday April 27 2015, @06:25PM
Yep, the IBM blind buyers are corporations. This allows their blind buy culture to outlive the employees pushing it. This is why the sold off most if not all of their consumer goods divisions. They realized their biggest business is to act as a consulting leech on other big companies.
Hopefully those companies will die off, though.
"Don't you ever miss the days when you used to be nostalgic?" -Loiosh