IBM Outperforms Even Apple: Smarter Planet, Big Data and Cloud Power the Future

http://wikibon.org/blog/ibm-outperforms-even-apple-smarter-planet-big-data-and-cloud-power-the-future/?utm_source=twitterfeed&utm_medium=twitter&utm_campaign=Feed%3A+WikibonBlog+%28Wikibon+Blog%29

by Sato • 15 years ago

48 13 15 years ago

wikibon.org

tybris• 15 years ago

Funny that he's praising IBM for something as meaningless as a YTD stock price change, and then goes on to complain about Amazon and conveniently ignores that its stock price outperforms IBM at every level.

http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=ibm+vs+aapl+vs+amzn

sek• 15 years ago

You can also clearly see that the numbers of Apple are better than IBM. Who cares about the stock price.

hollerith• 15 years ago

Uh, because return on investment is the most important number of all? (Remember that the numbers in financial accounting were created for and have always been primarily for the benefit of investors.)

bitdiddle2• 15 years ago

What's even more impressive is that IBM pays a dividend, which in volatile equity markets and low interest environments is a very good thing.

Apple and Amazon do not.

notirk• 15 years ago

And dividend payments are represented in the stock price graph as a reduction of the price (on the ex-dividend date), making the return to investors actually higher than what is shown in the graph.

nl• 15 years ago

IBM is a great company and all, but the idea that IT services will outperform all other IT related sectors is interesting..

Services are - by their nature - always related to head count. In the old days - 10 years ago - Microsoft dominated financially because they could resell shink-wrapped software better than anyone else.

Customising software can be lucratitive, but it is difficult to make it as profitable as reselling copies of the same bits over and over again.

Indeed - one could argue that Apple has simply out-Microsofted Microsoft now. They resell the same software and hardware and make almost MS-like profit margins (even taking the higher material costs of hardware ino account)

mattmanser• 15 years ago

Customising software can be lucratitive, but it is difficult to make it as profitable as reselling copies of the same bits over and over again.

The amounts these companies charge is obscene, plenty of companies spend several orders of magnitude more money on customisation and consultancy than they do on generic software licences and hardware.

And then you get the nice juicy recurring support contract on top of that too.

Also Apple sells hardware, which is not the same bits over and over again.

alperakgun• 15 years ago

I will be surprised if IBM soon becomes the most valuable company, a very small probability for example...if iphone-n turns out to be a flop microsoft struggles in post of era.

tom_b• 15 years ago

IBM is very good at acquiring companies, rebranding acquired products as Big Blue offerings, and then pumping these down the established sales pipe to their enterprise customers. Notice that global services is the majority of their revenues - 57% - (http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/International_Business_Machin...)

Oh, if only I could hack into that beautiful stream of out-sourced services money . . . (hint, hint)

IBM Outperforms Even Apple: Smarter Planet, Big Data and Cloud Power the Future

Related Stories