Apple Closes The Day As The Most Valuable Company In The World For The First Time Ever.

Apple has closed the day as the most valuable public company in the world knocking off Exxon Mobil.

It's an incredible feat considering Apple was a broken company 15 years ago. In the world of technology, which evolves so rapidly, only a handful of companies have been able to reverse course and find new life.

Apple's rise to the top happened rather suddenly. Just a year ago it passed Microsoft to become the biggest company in tech. At the start of the year it was still $75 billion behind Exxon. Today it's $6 billion ahead.

But, a market crash coupled with Apple's astounding earnings performance have vaulted it to the top of the heap.

Just goes to show how many mindless idiots there are out there buying dysfunctional Apple fashion toys............

Just shows what a genius Steve Jobs is. The company was on it's knees when he took control again. Now look at it.

I think dysfunctional is the wrong word... and using one word to describe what's wrong with their products isn't going to be easy, not without putting some serious thought into it. What I don't like about them is the level of control/access they give you, or rather don't give you. You have to use apple products the way they want you do, you can't do things your own way. DRM being just the tip of the iceberg on this issue.

Apple's GPM on hardware is 50%, its industry leading. For most PC manufactures its 5%. A commonly held misbelief is that Apple is coining it in from iTunes, on music the GPM is 10%. Overall, iTunes sales account for just 1% of Apple's GPM. iTunes, OSX and iOS all help to sell the hardware, which is where the profit is.

Paul McCartney and Ringo must be coining it in....

I agree with you Schnauzer.

The hardware and software may be very expensive (mostly the HW) but that premium is paid fomr something that WORKS.

In the professional world of publishing, design, broadcast and postproduction Apple products have great success because their products work and work far more reliably than PC based products. In a professional market that saves FAR more £££ than it costs for the kit. It's just basic maths.

As for consumer stuff.....it's aspirational, the pros use it and the designers make it look pretty therefore it sells.

Nothing like having a premium bit of kit when you (or everyone else) is poor/struggling to convey the message that "I am doing well".

People cant afford to move house much atm but they can afford a new iPhone on a contract spread over 24 months.

Yaaaaawwwwwwwnnnnnnnnn, why does this keep coming up.

They make an aspirational product and reap the rewards. A lesson to us all in business. Product or service, either, if you want to get a march on your competition model your business on them.
Don't like them or their product don't buy!

Exactly.

and Scamb66...my guess is it keeps coming up cos people raise it as a topic of discussion with those who might share an interest in it. This is the General Banter forum after all.

If your only comment is to question why it's here rather than engage in the discussion then I am more inclined to question your presence in this thread rather than the thread itself.

Exactly.

In a certain respect the two companies share some of the same heritage. This may be going out on a limb but both products strive for innovation and started out fighting for market share that was held by hugely developed companies. IBM and Microsoft and Honda and its next door neighbors and Ducati to the south. The naked hooligan had been around for quite some time and you do not need to categorize the UJM out of the equation either. The original designer rode a Monster around for years and said as much as it was his inspiration for creating the SD. I may not be a good judge or should I say fair judge on this matter but suffice it to say KTM and Apple fit together in more ways than the fruit bowl sitting on my kitchen table. One orange out loud, one read out loud. I remember the Apple commercial that showed lithargic drones looking for a way to escape from dullsville and a chick throwing a hammer through conformity, This is how i feel about the KTM products sept Apple don't make a toaster(yet).
Take a byte, then you will become like us, knowers of both good and evil

Interesting........... I might be tempted to buy a KTM iphone

If Apple made a motorcycle it would obviously be called the iBike.

Let’s imagine for a moment that they are trumpeting the imminent release of the all new iBike 4. Here is what the release might say and the English translation of the true meaning.

Apples visionary leader Steve Jobbs will soon be introducing the world to the revolutionary iBike4, a product set to revolutionise the bike market worldwide.
(sales of the iBike3 are slowing as people twig that it’s slower, has less range is down on power and overpriced compared to all its competitors so as the iBike4 has been ready to release for a long time already we have decided now is the time to revitalise the revenue stream)

The iBike4 will feature downloadable apps that allow the display systems to change colour and you can also download the iHorn app that changes the tone of the horn! Wow!! The speedo display now has mega resolution making it the sharpest display fitted to any bike – Talk about bragging rights.
(We are including a load of new features that nobody needs and few will ever notice / use to disguise the fact that nothing much has changed. Oh and we will charge you for the privilege whilst we are at it)

Together with the release of iBike4 we are expanding the range of iFill petrol stations making it easier than ever to buy the iPetrol that your iBike needs to run.
(That’s right, you still have to use our gateways to access the stuff you need and we will decide what you can and can’t have as well as controlling its price)

The real revelation though is the all new iGrip to keep you safe while you have fun. This Apple system monitors your wheel speed and actually reduces the power if it detects wheel spin to optimise traction and keep you safe. iGrip is a major breakthrough and you are going to be amazed, Apple ahead of the game again
(We are two or three years behind the competition and only now getting round to fitting traction control. If it was like face time it would only work under certain restricted conditions and only if running on iTarmac but I don’t want to labour the point)

I don’t in any way criticise Apple for any of this. If you can sell cheap to produce (hence the GP on hardware) outdated stuff with restrictive conditions that optimise your additional revenue streams then good on you. To do this at a price premium is close to commercial genius! It’s the ultimate triumph of style over substance (In the consumer products division at least) and I take my hat off to them.
To me computers, phones etc are just machines, I go for the one that offers the best combination of performance and price available to me at the time. In my case that has never been an Apple product. I do have a company supplied iPhone which is OK but my mates Sony and Samsung Android phones are nicer, more reliable and much more flexible.

The Apple debate seems a very polarised one, it’s more like a belief system than a simple consumer choice for some people. Funny what we chose to care about isn’t it....

"I think it does buried among all the other stuff, its pretty useless as a phone though, crap signal if you hold it in your hand, rubbish voice quality, forget texting more than 3 words unless you have all day and are not on a bus train or in a car"

"Is this just an issue with iphone use in China? I can't really fault its use in the UK. Certainly no worse than Sony or Nokia. Oh and I'm not an Apple junkie, use a normal lap top with MS for everything else, and that really is a poor system"

Try texting with one hand, try texting or looking something up in a taxi, try using an iphone in your sweaty hand when its 35C-40C,

yes the phone network is real busy in China, an iphone cant hack it, poor signal you get giberish and constant dropped calls

I only got my iphone because it was the only high end phone at the time that actually worked with my sat nav.

There are lots of things I don't like about apple and how my use is restricted, I had an mp3 player that could do video and handle many more formats than apple allows way before apple brought out the ipod video and claimed it was something new the market had never been seen before and it used to really annoy me that stereo manufacturers only bothered putting ipod connectivity and ignored basic usb and filesystem control for non apple devices

However, at the end of the day, apple at least managed to give me a phone I could use while on the road doing installs on my bike, my at the time, latest greatest nokia n96 couldn't even consistently stay connected to my sat nav and I was a big nokia fan who used to mock the iphone as just pretty packaging for nothing new.

So I'll never be a fanboi and apple will continue to annoy me but sometimes their stuff does just seem to work (within their limits at least)

and... Google to acquire Motorola for $12.5bn!

These are not mobile/cell phones anymore! they're personal media devices that every OEM, OS and rights holder is clamouring to own. Making calls is secondary in their design. The BEST mobile/cell phone ever made was the Nokia 6310i, 7 days standby, 3 days talk time.