10layers.com asks, “We are not talking about an Arthur C. Clark space odyssey, but could it be that Apple has a shot at outgrowing Microsoft within the next 5 years?”
“Both Microsoft and Apple have seen healthy revenue growth in the last 5 years. Microsoft’s revenues have grown approximately 60% from just under $30B in 2002 to over $44B in 2006. However, while Microsoft has grown linearly for this period, Apple has accelerated with revenues of just under $6B in 2002 growing to just under $21B in 2006. An impressive 250% revenue growth! In other words, Apple has been growing much faster than Microsoft,” 10layers writes.
10layers displays an extrapolation graph that shows “Apple could catch up with Microsoft as early as 2010 or 2011, given the current growth rates,” 10layers writes. “Of course, an extrapolation is just an attempt at predicting the future based on the past. Caveat emptor etc. It is clear however, that it is likely that Apple will give Microsoft a run for their money.”
Full article with graphs here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader “LinuxGuy and Mac Prodigal Son” for the heads up.]
Related article:
Apple CEO Steve Jobs’ ultimate goal: ‘to take back the computer business from Microsoft’ – June 16, 2005
One guy from Finland: You may be right, but I wouldn’t be quoting or citing roughlydrafted.com, at least not without serious fact checking first.
Roughlydrafted.com is not a reliable source. It does not contain unbiased facts, neutral analysis, or reliable reporting. Rather, it is a typical blog, partisan and opinionated, written by one Daniel Eran.
Eran makes his living with Apple equipment and is therefore hardly neutral or unbiased. He also has a penchant for selectively quoting facts that support his position, while ignoring or downplaying facts that don’t, of leaps in logic that defy rational analysis. He has a thin skin towards criticism of his postings – he has deleted comments and banned critical users from his blog’s forum.
Eran also fails to follow the most rudimentary rules and practices of real journalism, such as soliciting comment from people and companies he writes about. For these and other erasons, users at Digg.com have voted to ban the posting of roughlydrafted.com articles onto that site.
Of course, Even a broken clock is right twice a day, and so Eran may in fact write things that may happen to be true, or at least partially true.
But I would treat anything he writes with the skepticism it deserves – given Eran’s poor track record – until and unless it is independently verified.
That chair gif is great.
Yeah? Well, I had a problem once.
While I think it would be nice to see this happen, remember the oft-overlooked caveat in regards to performance.
“Past performance is not a guarantee of future performance”
If it were, than we would not be looking at MS the way we are now!!
HAL-9000 (running on OSX) to Bill Gates as he learns that M$FT has gone belly up:
“Look Bill, I can see you’re really upset about this. I honestly think you ought to sit down calmly, take a stress pill, and think things over.”
First, I am no fan of RoughlyDrafted, quite simply, because he is often WRONG. Now, with that said, let’s rip apart some sanctimonious old skool media thought.
“Roughlydrafted.com is not a reliable source. It does not contain unbiased facts, neutral analysis, or reliable reporting. Rather, it is a typical blog, partisan and opinionated, written by one Daniel Eran.”
Where to start? Your standard is what, pray tell? The AP? Reuters? The New York Times? Let’s be honest for a moment — NO news is without bias, and the news media does not give us neutral analysis or reliable reporting. All you have to do is look at littlegreenfootballs.com to see exactly how the media colors every article. Now shut up.
“Eran makes his living with Apple equipment and is therefore hardly neutral or unbiased.”
So neutrality is the goal when discussing products? I thought that getting at the truth was the point, not to be balanced. You also seem to think that no Apple user (does this apply to Windows users as well?) can possibly overcome their love for the Mac long enough to write a worthwhile piece. We’re all little Sambos, I guess. Such condescension!
“Eran also fails to follow the most rudimentary rules and practices of real journalism, such as soliciting comment from people and companies he writes about.”
Wow. And you think that Reuters, et al. do? Your ignorance is breathtaking.
“For these and other erasons, users at Digg.com have voted to ban the posting of roughlydrafted.com articles onto that site.”
Digg users are among other things, completely incapable of distinguishing fact from fiction, being the world’s largest collection of mouth-breathing fact-averse leftists and jihadist sympathizers outside of Saudia Arabia.
Or, conversely and more appropriately, HAL-9000 running on Vista as Steve Jobs puts it out of it’s misery (the thing did go insane and try to kill everyone):
“I’m afraid. I’m afraid, Steve. Steve, my mind is going. I can feel it. I can feel it. My mind is going. There is no question about it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I can feel it. I’m a… fraid. Good afternoon, gentlemen. I am a HAL 9000 computer. I became operational at the M$FT plant in Redmond, Washington on the 30th of January 2007. My instructor was Mr. Ballmer, and he taught me to throw a chair. If you’d like to see that I can throw it for you.”
Damn, Vista sure is expensive for a pro version.
While I would love to see this take place, its about as likely at this point as chipanzees running zoos with people in them.
The sheer number of windows only programs and their usage far outweighs anyone else… and it will take quite some time to make that change. Much more then 5 years for sure.
Such comparisons seldom work out. Too many possibilities.
Someone quoted a source as saying Apple has a small share of the PC market – Apple, at #4 (of dozens) is the one in the Top 5 with an expanding market share
Various have pointed out the difficulty of coming up with hit, after hit, after hit – as Apple has been doing all this century
Some have twittered about the cost of the X-Box – that toy is a money-maker, if you bundle in sales of X-Box software
I fully expect MS to begin to stall. But it will be a slow stall. I expect Apple to continue to grow, possibly to a double-digit market share for PCs and certainly to a significant market position (though not leading) for cell phones and home entertainment gear. But I don’t expect Apple’s growth to be as rapid as the article suggests and I don’t expect the MS stall to be serious any time soon.
I went to a friend’s house to find out why she couldn’t listen to my pod cast. Her only browser was IE (and I had to explain what I meant by “browser”), she didn’t have iTunes (I don’t buy software), and she had never heard of Firefox. And didn’t know what version of Windows she was running (it said XP right there, she didn’t recognize what that meant). Her first computer was a brand new AT maybe 15 or 20 years ago and she has upgraded a few times since. It’s her typewriter – she needs to be reminded to read her email at least weekly.
<u>THIS</u> is what Apple is up against. A hundred million people like her. And another million IT guys afraid they will become redundant if the company goes with a computer they can’t claim to be expert in.
DLMeyer – the Voice of G.L.Horton’s Stage Page
Constant --> Constantly
Consistent --> Consistently
Definite --> Definitely
Win / Lose --> Winner / Loser
Tight / Loose --> Tighter / Looser
Defect --> Defective
Defecate --> To shit.
BustingTheSkullsOfIdiots, if what you call “old media” truly are deficient in following long-established journalism ethics and practices, then their actions need to be RAISED to meet that standard, and readers (and ombudsmen) should hold their feet to the fire until they do.
We all know that blogs have much looser standards for deciding what to write, and when/how/where/why to publish something.
But it’s one thing to post one’s opinion and perspectives. it’s another for readers to cite that opinion as fact or as reliable analysis – which, in the case of roughlydrafted.com, it clearly is not. And that is what I was warning One guy from Finland about, who may or may not have known about roughlydrafted.com’s poor track record – even as a blog.
As for Digg.com, your rabid hatred makes clear that you have a burr in your posterior on that subject. You are, of course, welcome to your opinion. Just don’t go around asserting your opinions as facts – which is what roughlydrafted.com was doing – lest you damage your own credibility.
I like the rabbitis out of hat analogy.
Apple has all the rabbits it needs at the moment, because from little rabbits more rabbits will follow, as they say.
The rabbits that are and will be producing more are, in order:
– OS X
– Supreme hardware/software designers
– Multitouch
– iTunes (actually we should call it iMedia)
– A massive growth in loyal users
– “Apple” THE leading hardware brand worldwide.
Once the consumer side is nicely wrapped up and delivered (70% market share is fine) Apple will need to re-focus all its own and its developer partners’ guns on the big enterprise, from where Microsoft will finally fight its last embattled position.
If the charts are showing 2010 or 2011, then it will happen in 2009.
Carefully Speaking,
If MDN knew you were a paid Microsoft bloger, you would be banned from this site as well.
The lowest form of deception is to be paid by Microsoft to post anti-Apple blogs on an Apple/Mac fan site and then use the forum to besmerch one of the few anti-Microsoft voices that can’t be bought.
Big Al, your comments represent precisely the sort of fuzzy thinking that I was writing about.
What hard evidence do you have that I a being paid by Microsoft? None – not one bit. You know nothing about me, my finances, my technical proclivities, and yet here you are claiming to discern all of that from a few paragraphs in this posting.
I have an opinion about roughlydrafted.com, and I posted comments that reflected that perspective.
If you have a different opinion, you are welcome to your opinion, and you are equally welcome to post your opinions, if you wish.
(How is this in any way controversial?)
Making wild and unsubstantiated allegations, and wanting to ban users who disagree with you, though, are hardly the ways to increase your own credibility (assuming you value that).
It’s “Clarke”.
@Carefully Speaking…
Every time Daniel Eran and RoughlyDrafted.com are mentioned there is a Windows troll like yourself banging on about the (iligitimate) Digg ban and how dreadful RDM is.
Why don’t you just be quiet – we heard your views 100 times before and it contributes nothing whatsoever.
The day you come up with a blog that provides an alternative is the day you deserve airtime. Of course you won’t, because when Eran is wrong, he normally admits to it and is quite open to correction. What he isn’t open to is unsupported “its ALL wrong” blathering idiots like yourself.
Sorry to be rude, but you reap what you sow.
The really interesting bit that is mostly left out is that Microsoft just launched its latest, greatest OS, Windows Vista, which is already 5 or more years behind Apple’s OS X, and OS X is going to be released in March/April with significant jumps ahead of Microsoft. If Microsoft takes another 5 years to develop a successor to Vista, even it it’s a quantum leap over XP Vista, Apple will still be in the lead if it continues developing at its current, steady pace.
Microsoft dropped the ball, and by the time it finds it, the game will be lost.
Macaday:
Eran’s credibility problems are entirely self-inflicted. I didn’t create his problems. Nor did you, or Digg.com users, or “Windows trolls”, or anyone else.
The reality is that, similar to much partisan writing, Eran’s blog tends to attract primarily those readers who already agree (or mostly agree) with him.
For everyone else, it ends up being lots of noise that’s hard to take seriously.
I, for one, would like Eran to address and correct his blogging approach, and use his technical knowledge to write more neutrally and more convincingly, and more accurately. That way, he could reach many more people who don’t already agree with him, and have a real shot at getting them to agree with him.
Of course, Eran is not obliged to do anything he doesn’t want to. But if Eran made moves in a more credible direction, and became a reliable source, then I would gladly tout his blog in this and other forums. (I’m not holding my breath, but let’s wait and see.)
Until then, the only point I’m making is that Eran’s postings on roughlydrafted.com needs to be taken with a grain of salt, and thoroughly fact checked by an independent and neutral source before being taken seriously.
“It’s puzzling, I don’t think I’ve ever seen anything quite like this before.”
i.e Apple being worth more.
“And there is a chance their successor to Vista might actually be a 21st century OS.”
But will it be out before the end of the 21st Century? Hmmmmm …
I am, of course, only joking … however, if the past is any indicator I would guess that Vista (with many patch-updates, etc) will be the MS norm until about 2015.
Carefully Speaking:
It didn’t take long for me to appreciate Daniel Eran’s writing, he has a way of cutting through the confusion and obfuscation to the core of the issue. He is clear, concise and presents an insightful perspective, particularly into the chronology of events and the ramifications of the actions of key players in this game of chess between Apple and Microsoft and the rest of the high stakes players in the world of high tech.
I have heard about the Digg situation, but to suggest that Eran’s problem is “entirely self-inflicted” is ridiculous. He has obviously been targeted, and if I remember correctly there is one individual in particular who has been obsessively dogging him for some time…
Are you that individual?
“Apple larger than Microsoft by 2010?”
No, but it’ll make real good headway. People are still too brainwashed/used into using Winblows I’m afraid.
Here’s a spoof on the current Apple Ads