Microsoft becomes second U.S. firm to pass $2 trillion market cap

Posted:
in General Discussion edited June 2021
Microsoft reached a $2 trillion market capitalization in trading Tuesday, joining a small group of global companies that have crossed that threshold -- including Apple.

Credit: WikiMedia Commons
Credit: WikiMedia Commons


The technology giant is now the second publicly traded U.S. company to reach a $2 trillion market valuation. Apple reached its own $2 trillion market cap back in August 2020.

Despite hitting $2 trillion in intraday trading on Tuesday, Microsoft's valuation was about $300 million shy of the high-water mark by the time markets closed. Its share price is currently sitting at $265.51 as of 5:23 p.m. Eastern time.

Like Apple, Microsoft has benefitted from the work-from-home and remote education boom created as a result of the coronavirus pandemic. Since March 2020, when lockdowns began, Microsoft's stock has surged 64%.

Back in April, the company reported that its sales had risen 19% year-over-year to $41.7 billion in the first quarter of 2020.

As of writing, Apple's market valuation stands at $2.24 trillion. Some analysts believe the Cupertino tech giant could become the first to hit a $3 trillion market cap within a few years.

Along with the technology giants, oil company Saudi Aramco also once surpassed the $2 trillion mark. On Tuesday, its market valuation was $1.88 trillion.

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Comments

  • Reply 1 of 13
    22july201322july2013 Posts: 3,564member
    Nice to see some benefiting during the COVID virus.

    As a kid I remember hearing that in times of high inflation, book companies sold more books, because that was a cheap person's way to take a vacation. So I've always remembered that in any economic crisis there will always be some winners.

  • Reply 2 of 13
    red oakred oak Posts: 1,087member
    Evidently, completely fucking up mobile including the failed Nokia merger and Windows mobile,  the failed MIcrosoft retail stores,  weak Microsoft Surface device sales, failed wearables efforts, failed content services including MS App Store and music, …

    Evidently, it all does not matter  how badly you fuck up
    edited June 2021 williamlondon
  • Reply 3 of 13
    XedXed Posts: 2,519member
    I remember reading seeing many forum members her claim that MS was going to be going under soon. MS makes a lot—I mean a lot—of mistakes (see Red Oak's comment for a handful of them), but if your successful services are still doing great you aren't going to be shuttering your doors.
    red oakCloudTalkinmuthuk_vanalingamelijahgchemengin1FileMakerFeller
  • Reply 4 of 13
    chadbagchadbag Posts: 1,999member
    I believe March 2020 was the low point or near the low after the market downturn at the start of the Covid ramp up.    How does their current price compare to the Feb or Jan 2020 price?

    that Covid dip was an aberration and was quickly recovered from later in the year. 
  • Reply 5 of 13
    red oak said:
    Evidently, completely fucking up mobile including the failed Nokia merger and Windows mobile,  the failed MIcrosoft retail stores,  weak Microsoft Surface device sales, failed wearables efforts, failed content services including MS App Store and music, …

    Evidently, it all does not matter  how badly you fuck up
    Kind of like Thomas Edison, who fu..messed up thousands of times, and still had 1,093 patents.
    Ted Williams failed 656 times out of 1000 times at bat, and is in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
    Apple failed with the Apple III, Lisa, Newton, Pippin, and a bunch of other things, and is still the has the highest market capitalization of any company (except the East India Tea Company in its day, but that's another story...)

    Your last statement is so true, but there's something missing:  It's what you do after you mess up that defines whether you're a success or not.

    The point is when we deal in failure, it's easy to build a case against anyone.  It is those that fail, learn, and move on who are the successes in the world. 
    edited June 2021 CloudTalkinred oakmuthuk_vanalingamFileMakerFellerTRAG
  • Reply 6 of 13
    The market cap for the U.S. Congressional antitrust measures is $600 billion, so MS would definitely be subject to them if they pass and are signed into law. 
  • Reply 7 of 13
    seanjseanj Posts: 318member
    Microsoft, proof that crime does pay…
  • Reply 8 of 13
    red oakred oak Posts: 1,087member
    red oak said:
    Evidently, completely fucking up mobile including the failed Nokia merger and Windows mobile,  the failed MIcrosoft retail stores,  weak Microsoft Surface device sales, failed wearables efforts, failed content services including MS App Store and music, …

    Evidently, it all does not matter  how badly you fuck up
    Kind of like Thomas Edison, who fu..messed up thousands of times, and still had 1,093 patents.
    Ted Williams failed 656 times out of 1000 times at bat, and is in the Baseball Hall of Fame.
    Apple failed with the Apple III, Lisa, Newton, Pippin, and a bunch of other things, and is still the has the highest market capitalization of any company (except the East India Tea Company in its day, but that's another story...)

    Your last statement is so true, but there's something missing:  It's what you do after you mess up that defines whether you're a success or not.

    The point is when we deal in failure, it's easy to build a case against anyone.  It is those that fail, learn, and move on who are the successes in the world. 
    #True 
    jeffythequick
  • Reply 9 of 13
    bleabbleab Posts: 23member
    red oak said:
    Evidently, completely ***ing up mobile including the failed Nokia merger and Windows mobile,  the failed MIcrosoft retail stores,  weak Microsoft Surface device sales, failed wearables efforts, failed content services including MS App Store and music, …

    Evidently, it all does not matter  how badly you **** up
    Until the rise of the iPhone and iPad, Microsoft was the world's #1 company thanks to Windows, Office and enterprise software. While mobile took some of that business away, it didn't take away nearly as much as the people who primarily use Apple devices - and as a result have no idea just how vital those are to the vast majority of businesses and a vital segment of high income consumers - predicted. Instead mobile replaced "dumb" consumer electronics devices that Microsoft never made in the first place: Radio Shack stuff. Or mobile became the first true "personal computer" that people used voluntarily apart from work or school or - in the case of Android in developing nations - used at all.  The result is that while Microsoft missed out on the new market unlike GE, RCA, Sony etc. they didn't lose very much of what they already had to mobile. 

    Also need to address some misconceptions and outright falsehoods. First Microsoft makes plenty of money on content: video game sales on XBox and Windows as well as the 50-75 million XBox Game Pass and XBox Gold subscriptions. Also, Microsoft makes plenty of money on mobile by way of their Office 365 apps. Thanks to the 70% cut from those as opposed to a 30% and not having the platform maintenance expenses, lots of people speculated that Microsoft was making more profit off mobile than Google was. Finally while Microsoft gets negligible direct revenue from XBox and Windows hardware they make tons off accessories because of high margins. Microsoft didn't provide full financials on this to the Epic trial because the numbers would have shown that - for example - while they lose money on $300-$500 XBox consoles that lasts 7 years, they make plenty on the $70 controllers that need to be replaced every 18 months, require 2-4 per console and are heavily used for PC gaming too. 

    Finally you are ignoring what has been the main driver of Microsoft revenue growth the last 5 years: cloud. While Ballmer was the Microsoft CEO, everyone assumed that Amazon and Google were going to run away with cloud. But Microsoft ditched Ballmer for Nadella who put in a plan.
    1.  Admit that Google GSuite was a real threat and get serious about Office 365 to crush it
    2. Create a SaaS or PaaS equivalent for every Microsoft enterprise product i.e. Sharepoint, Active Directory, SQL Server etc.
    3. Focused on establishing at least basic feature parity for Amazon AWS product.
    4. Get their massive enterprise customer base to partially or completely replace their existing products with cloud ones. They are even promoting Azure as the solution for getting rid of their 32 bit legacy code (turning it into software as a service which allows you to use modern hardware and software platforms going forward). So now even though AWS is way ahead Azure is a respectable #2 with Google Cloud Platform only (barely) profitable because it is able to hitch a ride on the same infrastructure they use for YouTube, search and Android.

    While a lot of people are laughing at things like xCloud and especially Stadia now as well as calling 5G nothing but hype, it actually is the way of the future. It is going to make platforms agnostic and hardware a commodity for most people. Even graphic design, animation and VFX is being done in the cloud now. Currently the economics are a barrier - a small time operation is much better off spending $50,000 upfront for 10 M1 Mac Minis plus software than getting the equivalent for $3000 a month via cloud - but a larger organization would benefit from being able to provide the same software over the cloud to people who can access it with cheap ChromeOS or Windows 2-in-1s to access it 24 hours a day, 7 days a week from anywhere in the world. Pixar proved that it was possible by doing the last 12+ months of work - voice acting, scoring, sound mixing, postproduction etc. - on Luca from the cloud. Granted it was done with iPads - this is Pixar we are talking about here - and not Dell or HP Surface clones running Windows or ChromeOS, but Apple would rather that work be done with $3000 Macs than $1000 iPad Pros.

    That is why Microsoft has $2 trillion in valuation - and Google $1.5 trillion - despite neither selling anywhere near 250 million mobile devices or even 25 million PCs a year. Apple probably gets more new revenue from Apple Arcade than Microsoft from xCloud and especially Google from Stadia today, but everyone believes that the delivery model for xCloud and Stadia - SaaS over 5G (with 6G on the way https://newatlas.com/telecommunications/samsung-6g-prototype-terahertz/) and broadband is the business model of tomorrow. 
    FileMakerFellermuthuk_vanalingamTRAG
  • Reply 10 of 13
    thttht Posts: 5,420member
    red oak said:
    Evidently, completely fucking up mobile including the failed Nokia merger and Windows mobile,  the failed MIcrosoft retail stores,  weak Microsoft Surface device sales, failed wearables efforts, failed content services including MS App Store and music, …

    Evidently, it all does not matter  how badly you fuck up
    MS has a monopoly on office automation software and PC operating software with services and software that serve those monopolies, with a vast and intricate relationship network with Enterprises and Corps. They then were able to ply those relationships for their network services business. As long as they don't mess up those monopoly positions, there is no amount of completely fucking up that could hurt them. Fund managers know this and hence their market capitalization.

    Same with Alphabet and their moonshots running at something like $5b losses per year. As long as search and ads are ok, there is no amount of failures that could affect the company.
    FileMakerFellermuthuk_vanalingam
  • Reply 11 of 13
    bleabbleab Posts: 23member
    Your last statement is so true, but there's something missing:  It's what you do after you mess up that defines whether you're a success or not.

    The point is when we deal in failure, it's easy to build a case against anyone.  It is those that fail, learn, and move on who are the successes in the world. 
    Nah. There have been 3 Microsoft eras.
    1. Bill Gates: Windows, Office, XBox. Most influential tech company in the world. Success.
    2. Steve Ballmer: Windows Mobile, Surface. Spent half his time failing to crush innovation and the other half making the mistake of copying Apple instead of Google. Failure.
    3. Satyda Nadella: Co-opted innovation instead of fighting it. Stopped copying Apple in hardware (against whose experience/expertise/reputation they cannot possibly compete) - and started copying Google in mobile and cloud software and services (where their experience/expertise/reputation actually surpasses Google's). Success.

    1 -(-2 by ditching the money losing failures) + 3 = $2 trillion. Focusing on Microsoft's failure in 2. is taking the Apple-centric view that only hardware and app store profits matter. The truth is the opposite. If one excludes China, only a few companies make money selling end-user (i.e. consumer) hardware and only 2 companies - Apple and Google - make real money off their app stores. Yet the tech sector is massive, meaning there is an exhorbitant amount of money to be made in areas that Apple isn't a real player in. 
  • Reply 12 of 13
    bleab said:
    Your last statement is so true, but there's something missing:  It's what you do after you mess up that defines whether you're a success or not.

    The point is when we deal in failure, it's easy to build a case against anyone.  It is those that fail, learn, and move on who are the successes in the world. 
    Nah. There have been 3 Microsoft eras.
    1. Bill Gates: Windows, Office, XBox. Most influential tech company in the world. Success.
    2. Steve Ballmer: Windows Mobile, Surface. Spent half his time failing to crush innovation and the other half making the mistake of copying Apple instead of Google. Failure.
    3. Satyda Nadella: Co-opted innovation instead of fighting it. Stopped copying Apple in hardware (against whose experience/expertise/reputation they cannot possibly compete) - and started copying Google in mobile and cloud software and services (where their experience/expertise/reputation actually surpasses Google's). Success.

    1 -(-2 by ditching the money losing failures) + 3 = $2 trillion. Focusing on Microsoft's failure in 2. is taking the Apple-centric view that only hardware and app store profits matter. The truth is the opposite. If one excludes China, only a few companies make money selling end-user (i.e. consumer) hardware and only 2 companies - Apple and Google - make real money off their app stores. Yet the tech sector is massive, meaning there is an exhorbitant amount of money to be made in areas that Apple isn't a real player in. 
    You say, "nah..." and then prove my point...

    2.  The Ballmer era - MS screwed up
    3.  They learned and moved on...

    I guess I should have put in there that it's a continuous process...  Or was the OP saying that #3 is the screw up?
  • Reply 13 of 13
    bleabbleab Posts: 23member
    tht said:
    red oak said:
    Evidently, completely fucking up mobile including the failed Nokia merger and Windows mobile,  the failed MIcrosoft retail stores,  weak Microsoft Surface device sales, failed wearables efforts, failed content services including MS App Store and music, …

    Evidently, it all does not matter  how badly you fuck up
    MS has a monopoly on office automation software and PC operating software with services and software that serve those monopolies, with a vast and intricate relationship network with Enterprises and Corps. They then were able to ply those relationships for their network services business. As long as they don't mess up those monopoly positions ... Fund managers know this and hence their market capitalization.

    Same with Alphabet and their moonshots running at something like $5b losses per year. As long as search and ads are ok, there is no amount of failures that could affect the company.
    MS has a monopoly on Office and to a lesser extent Windows. They don't have anywhere near a monopoly on anything else, which is why they spent the Ballmer era attempting to either buy off or sue the rest of the software world out of existence. Those who lost out to Microsoft merely want to believe that Microsoft merely "leveraged a vast and intricate relationship network." The truth is that Microsoft created better products: well designed, easy to manage, comprehensive and tightly integrated stuff that the likes of Novell, Apple and IBM didn't compete with. People will claim until the end of time that OS/2 and Mac OS 8/9 were better than Windows. Fine, but what they didn't have were better ways to talk to each other - and to printers - over a LAN or be managed in a central, remote and uniform way. Windows 95 and 98 offered that and more which is why Microsoft won out. 

    Also, Microsoft's market cap is due to a combination that no one else has: real market share/influence in PCs, enterprise, mobile and cloud. Microsoft has 1. Windows 10 and Office, 2. Windows Server/SQL Server/Sharepoint/Exchange, 3. Office 365 and 4. Azure. By comparison Apple has:

    1. Macs (7% market share and hardware revenue only)
    2. nothing (even requires third party software for macOS and iOS identity and device management as my "vast relationship network excuse is a canard" mentions above)
    3. iOS, App Store, apps
    4. nothing (hosting your own apps and services doesn't count ... and they even pay AWS and Google to help with that). 

    Google has:

    1. a bit but definitely way behind Microsoft (1/8th of the OS market share, Google Docs is "free with data") and Apple (forget Macs, Pixelbooks get crushed by Surface)
    2. nothing (that they actually sell ... primarily FOSS stuff that most of its users don't even know that Google created it)
    3. Android, Google Play, apps
    4. The combination of Google Cloud Platform, Google Fiber and Google Fi is a distant #3 to AWS and Azure ... but it is enough to make them a factor here. 

    Amazon has:

    1. nothing
    2. even less than Google
    3. various Prime apps (a case can actually be made that they are #2 to Apple here if you consider how much Prime shopping is done on mobile)
    4. AWS which is #1 and massive, the backend to nearly every major cloud app/service not owned by above

    Past the big 4 ... take Oracle.
    1. nothing
    2. Oracle (plus Java - which nearly everyone uses for free - plus whatever else they got from the Sun Microsystems purchase boondoggle that they haven't killed yet)
    3. nothing
    4. (next to) nothing

    IBM
    1. despite inventing this space and dominating it for decades: nothing
    2. a lot ... but nearly all legacy stuff
    3. the CEO behind their huge "AI-driven enterprise apps for iPad" push was replaced so ... nothing
    4. see Oracle

    Facebook. Huge operation and not a legacy company. Now we're talking, right? Except ...
    1. nothing
    2. even less than Google
    3. their entire operation really
    4. nothing (they COULD be a player here but choose not to be)

    As I mentioned in a previous post Microsoft ditched the one thing that wasn't working for them - mobile hardware/OS - to double down on the 4 that did. Worked like a charm. And then there is gaming. There are 6 real players here: Sony, Nintendo, Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Apple. Microsoft is the only one who gets real revenue in console (a lot), mobile (a little), PC (a lot) and cloud (a lot).

    Apple: mobile (#1).
    Google: mobile (a lot), cloud (a little)
    Amazon: mobile (a little ... Kindle App Store), cloud (a lot by providing a ton of IaaS and PaaS to video game studios plus Luna)
    Nintendo: console (a lot), mobile (a little)
    Sony: console (a lot), cloud (a little)

    Realize that xCloud - if handled correctly - could potentially have 100 million subscribers. Don't laugh: they had 18 million in January and may have 20 million by now. Granted, most of that 20 million isn't there primarily because of xCloud ... but also remember that xCloud is technically still in beta (720p on browser and mobile, XBox is the only way to play it on a TV). Either way xCloud likely has more paid subscribers than Apple TV+ has.


    FileMakerFeller
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