On October 6, 1997, in response to the question of what he’d do if he was in charge of Apple Computer, Dell founder and then CEO Michael Dell stood before a crowd of several thousand IT executives and answered flippantly, “What would I do? I’d shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders.”
A little more than a month later, on November 10, 1997, new Apple iCEO Steve Jobs responded, speaking in front of an image of Michael Dell’s bulls-eye covered face, “We’re coming after you, you’re in our sights.”
On January 13, 2006, after a little more than eight years of hard work, Apple Inc. passed Dell, Inc. in market value, $72,132,428,843 vs. $71,970,702,760 at market close respectively.
Today, in intraday NASDAQ trading, Apple’s market value passed 2 times that of Dell’s, $127.81 billion vs. $63.65 billion.
Got any snappy retorts for that one, Mr. Dell?
AAPL and DELL quotes via NASDAQ are here.
chlon said:
“i’m affraid apple takes all it’s hype from steve jobs and the day he will die, apple will be in freefall.”
I’ll bet you’re a riot at parties.
apple’s main source of income isn’t their computers at all, its all those ipoo’s and iphones etc. Both of which i’d never buy again. Anyway, I’m with you on the ubuntu dell thing!
Dell makes the worst and cheapest laptops on the planet. THeir customer service (based in india) IS HELL ON EARTH. NEVER BUY A DELL. Buy a Apple MacBook Pro Instead…Blackbrutha has spoken
One friend of mine thanked me yesterday and offered me quite many drinks last evening. Sometime ago I advised him to invest money to AAPL. He invested 10 000€ and the price was down somewhere around $80. I have long time advised people to buy AAPL because I seriously think that Apples market value will be way over 300 000 000 000 and pass Microsoft. If you do not own AAPL yet do the right thing and make your investment now. I bought mine before the split when it was down around $13-$14. I still invest as much that I can.
Michael Dell should have invested the money he has to AAPL instead of investing it back to Dell. Can´t help him. Let´s help ourself´s instead.
Could this be the reason he’s embracing Ubuntu Linux?
This is a gross misrepresentation, though a popular one, of what Michael Dell said. Michael Dell, when prodded by the interviewer, said that Apple was not the kind of business that he was interested in, that he had no interest whatsoever in running Apple, and that HE would shut the company down rather than attempt to turn it around. A perfectly appropriate answer coming from him and not an insult to Apple in any way.
Dell’s current misfortune has come after Michael Dell’s retirement as CEO and he is not directly responsible for it either.
No one here is in any way responsible for either Apple’s or Dell’s successes and failures. Mac fanatics are pathetic.
DUDE YOUR GETTING A MAC!!!
M$ is in free-fall, in its way down to ground. Everyone who build businesses around it, will fail. Linux is the only alternative to Mac OSX and is the only product that is competing with OSX. Windows is copying.
One that is always making fun of Apple is the pathethic clown Ballmer. Recently he laughed at iPhone, stating that nobody would never buy a 600 buck phone… 700,000 copies after, I think he is not laughing anymore…
Well, if Apple had not borrowed the code from the gnu Darwin project to become an *niX operating system and not entered the mp3 device arena they is a chance that they would not exist today.
that reminds me – i’m all out of twinkies and ganja
Good thing I saved Apple so you could all make these pompous comments.
If I hadn’t, Dell would have been right.
Can you say Job’s fanboys? Dell makes their money in the corporate segment on pc’s, laptops and above all, servers. Apple makes their money on, well, Ipod and now Iphone. Comparing revenue as a basis of determining market dominance is pointless. Give me the numbers on how many Dell laptops were sold last year compared to Macbooks. nuff said.
John Wells, did you buy a macbook expecting it to be a game machine?
I have not had any problems with my MBP other than the battery exchange. I’ve take it to Cancun, Paris, Barcelona, London, Frankfurt and Helsinki without having any issues.
Um…samuel?
Apple didn’t “borrow” ‘gnu’ Darwin. Darwin is Apple’s *nix variant from NeXT…fix-a-fied.
You Mac fans obviously know nothing about finance and even less about business. Apple makes their money on Ipods, not computers. Ipods and, well that’s basically it. Dell sells more computers than Apple ever will. Without mp3 players they have nothing.
Michael Dell should get more credit for being able to predict the future. He knew that Apple would eventually trounce his company, so he wanted it dismantled before it could begin building the momentum to do so …
Big o’l load of B:
Get a clue. Apple booked a $1 billion more revenue with their computers than with their iPods this quarter. Though Apple never reveals their margins on specific products, it’s clear from their gross margin figure for the quarter that a large chunk of their quarterly profit came from their computer business.
Read the financial report:
http://yahoo.brand.edgar-online.com/fetchFilingFrameset.aspx?dcn=0001104659-07-056111&Type=HTML
So, you were saying?
Buy some aapl shares and you will make money. It is going to hit $200 very soon.
Wow. Does anybody here have a degree in finance? Someone (including the writer of this article) should learn the difference between market capitalization and value; everyone here keeps calling the market cap the value and they are not the same. Market cap is just the number of shares times their price, but if the company were to be sold, that’s far less than they would fetch. The idea is to capture the price of a company’s future cash flows; so start looking at the balance sheets and income statements and forget about the cap! Now, I am not sure, but by glancing at their balance sheets, it looks like Dell is about 30% larger and would fetch the higher price.
@John: Apple’s net income is what you want to look at; that is their profit after taxes and other expenses. Did anyone here look that up? If we look at the year ending 2006, Apple had a NI of 1.989 bil while Dell’s was 2.614 bil; not even close. Go ahead and compare ytd as well; just watch out because the companies don’t report at the same time.
What a bunch of mactarded dreamers?!
Apple is built on hype, not quality as they use the SAME electronic parts as other makers. Ok the casing is nicer or shinier, miminilistic.
The iphone is a flop and will continue to be
Apple TV is a flop and will continue to be
The Apple OS is NICE but still a closed OS with little collaboration with software makers and other hardware developers.
The Apple NOS is a failure and continues to be.
The ipod is a success…
That said, it is not enough to overtake anyone.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
Ubuntu is more likely to overtake apple in about 4-5 years easy.
And guess who is selling it on their desktops? DELL!
Man, you Apple peeps are hateful flamers. Grow-up. Also, take into account that Dell is ONE of many PC companies, so Apple’s worth has surpassed Dell, and not by much, there is still Gateway, HP, etc… Oh, and I think the Dell employee’s will maintain their jobs.
Also, you do realize Apple is another MS up and coming, you think they are going to care about you IF they ever get anywhere the market share MS has… NO, they are just another corporation. Plus, once it becomes more feasible, hackers will start breaking Mac’s left and right, and if they want to appeal to REAL users, they will support third-party hardware so you can build your own Apple, with scalability comes more opportunities for bugs and crashs.
Y’all need to understand things and quit being such sheep, none of the big computer corps want to make us happy, they want the market share. As long as we have the option to build our own machines and customize it on our own, as long as we can keep our freedom intact, we can avoid having a computer industry like the Government.
Build your own machines? You aren’t building squat, you are only plugging parts together. And the best OS you can run is Ubuntu. What a joke.
I do like the way the PC Zealots (the true believers!) have started using ‘Mactard’. One thing never changes, PeeCee folks copy Mac folks. Wintard has a much better (and original) ring to it.
Sheep are the mactards that live inside their fishbowl and dont look at anything outside it.
“PeeCee folks copy Mac folks” – Like looking glass from Sun or other unix interfaces? Oh and how about that new TIME MACHINE lol. Hell OSX isnt even really by Apple , its ADAPTED by Apple because its basically BSD. Remember that the OLD MacCrap product was trashed in 2000.
And its kinda funny knowing that Apple had to ride on top of BSD just to survive and now you try to bash Linux?
I was just making the point that Ubuntu is growing at a faster rate and you mactards go off!
Sorry that facts bother you guys! lol
And for some more bothersomew news:
Market cap is just the number of shares times their price, but if the company were to be sold, that’s far less than they would fetch. The idea is to capture the price of a company’s future cash flows; so start looking at the balance sheets and income statements and forget about the cap! Now, I am not sure, but by glancing at their balance sheets, it looks like Dell is about 30% larger and would fetch the higher price. As long as we are comparing numbers: Apple’s net income is what you want to look at; that is their profit after taxes and other expenses. Did anyone here look that up? If we look at the year ending 2006, Apple had a NI of 1.989 bil while Dell’s was 2.614 bil; not even close. Go ahead and compare ytd as well; just watch out because the companies don’t report at the same time.
But then ACTUAL facts and comparisons are too much for most mactards.
” width=”19″ height=”19″ alt=”wink” style=”border:0;” />
I love this gem:
http://aarone.org/2007/05/29/michael-dell-in-2001/
Next: Wow lots of windows and/or linux fan girls just crawled out from under some rocks around here… Did it rain or something? Oh no its them crying over Vista or better yet the oft heard remark that “Linux is going to take over the world”.
I’d love to see that. I run Yellow Dog linux. I like the idea and the dream of linux; doesn’t blind me to the fact that linux (any distro) is still not ready for the desktop to any large degree. There is no way coroporate America is going to ditch MS for linux on the desktop soon. People oft cry about teh lack of “professional” software for business on teh Mac (whatever teh hell that means…Ahhh how much is ported to linux?
Servers? Most definitely, desktop still don’t see it happening, at least anytime soon.
Bottom line is this, linux users and Apple users have the same goal, to be free of the shackles of Microsoft. So maybe we should look at it this way” The enemy of my enemy is my friend”…
Lastly (from Jabber_wolf)
“But then ACTUAL facts and comparisons are too much for most mactards.”
You mean like PC apologists burrying their head in the sand and refusing to see Dell’s freefall? No can’t be bothered by facts can ya…
et al: Windows fanboys… got to love them they make life entertaining.
Karma must hurt for Mr.Dell and all of his employees, I cant wait to see Dell get shut down, I mean come on, why the hell are they selling cheap laptops, or should i say desktops with a laptop name! Hey Mr. Dell why dont you just give all the money back to your shareholders, and let apple dominate the computer world!!
P.S. I wrote this on a windows machine, if only apple’s were a little less, or if i only had more!