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 Interim CEO (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, $72.13 billion vs. $71.97 billion at market close, respectively.
On July 27, 2007, Apple’s value doubled that of Dell’s, $127.81 billion vs. $63.65 billion, respectively.
On December 6, 2007, Apple’s market value passed 3 times that of Dell’s, $165.66 billion vs. $54.42 billion, respectively.
Today in NASDAQ trading, Apple rose $6.05, or 3.48%, to close at $180.00 and the company’s market value passed 4 times that of Dell’s, $158.66 billion vs. $38.97 billion.
Got any snappy retorts now, Mr. Dell? What’s that, cat got your tongue?
AAPL and DELL quotes via NASDAQ are here.
If history teaches us anything it’s that nobody stays on top for very long. Gates bought and stole most of the technology for Windows but somewhere along the way Microsoft has become a big bloated corporation. Apple has lead with innovative products and a very demanding CEO in Jobs. Does anyone think that the current braintrust leading Microsoft can really restore investor confidence and get people to upgrade their aging PC’s?
Competition is good. it forces companies to keep innovating. I too bought Apple stock at $120 and expect it to go over $200 when new iPhones are released. Meanwhile people who are working at MS have stock options that are not worth anything if they are new comers.
Dell will survive but it they are too dependent on MS to drive people to upgrade. What is happening is a text book case of Marketing 101: when a company reaches the penetration stage of the market profits decline as the product becomes a commodity. Apple meanwhile it looks like is going to introduce an iPhone that can be used with any wireless carrier while still taking in dollars from AT&T;via their contracts. This is the difference between a well run company and MS.
Michael’s 1997 comment was a defining ‘Call to Duty’ moment for the Macintosh community and one I believe served to galvanize it. It was equally incredulous to me not only that a CEO would say such a thing in a public meeting, but that people were believing him! A box cloner that never invented anything! Something had to be done.
Those of us that had any type of influence over a Mac infrastructure all looked in the mirror that night and had a tough decision to make. My moment came a few weeks later when I was asked by our board of directors why I was still advocating Mac’s. Had I been living in a cave? Had I not heard we were backing a sinking ship (in Apple) and thus flushing the companies resources down the toilet. I successfully defended our position (and promised to give equal consideration to evaluating PC’s), but it was stated in no uncertain terms that if Apple tanked, I would be looking for work. It was a dicey 3 or 4 years before colleagues stopped sending me bad apple jokes and convenience store job applications (you gotta love the American workplace).
Many rightfully praise the vision and leadership of Steve Jobs because without it we would all be suffering horribly, however credit also needs to go to the consumers and advocates that kept the road cleared for the Mac by helping others to understand that quality and innovation are always a good investment.
“have you wankers seen my wife?”
Heh. Dell’s wife has that Vegas plastic surgery look. Kind of reminds me of Windows Vista.
-jcr
And you were going to license OS X for our boxes, right? You had to open your big mouth. Schmuck!
One more thing, Mike: Use some decent soap down here. You smell like day old lox!
@ C1
Poor Fozzy, being compared to Michael Dell…
Michael Dell can close it down, but there isn’t much left to give back to the shareholders.
@Ampar:
Good call on Michael Dell’s resemblance to Fred Savage. When his company finally flames out, perhaps he’ll sell the story of his rise and fall to Hollywood. They can call it The Blunder Years.
When Dell is worth zero, Apple will be infinitely more valuable than Dell. In truth, Apple already is infinitely more precious than Dell.
Dell’s market value appears to be accelerating downward. The number went from 3 times to 4 times while Apple’s market value was marking time (actually went down a bit).
OK! So now Apple can BUY Dell and produce it’s OWN CLONED computers!! ,
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Genius idea… isn’t it?
Where’s that Shaw Wu and that guy from Morgan Keegan???
Winston: Nice!
For a visual representation of what this means, check out this Comparison Chart showing the performance of Apple versus Dell since October 1997. AMAZING!!!
Let’s not forget that Apple’s market cap is also now comfortably ahead of HP (118B), closing in on Google (184B), and at 60% of Microsoft (272B).
Go Apple!
Apple’s market cap is larger than Hewlett-Packard, Dell, and Acer. Larger than any of their PC competition. Yet they sell far fewer computers than their competition. Their market cap is also bigger than Intel’s. I would say that the bullseye needs to be moved to Uncle Fester. What other targets are left?
“What other targets are left?”
There are a few more targets. Here are the top thirteen to date.
XOM EXXON MOBIL CP – 478.99B
CHL CHINA MOBILE LIMITED – 351.25B
GE GEN ELECTRIC CO – 331.42B
PTR PETROCHINA CO ADS – 287.25B
MSFT MICROSOFT CP – 270.74B
PBR PETROLEO BRASILEIRO – 274.01B
RDS-B ROYAL DUTCH SHELL – 252.42B
T AT&T;INC. – 235.54B
WMT WAL MART STORES – 225.91B
BP BP PLC – 226.03B
BHP BHP BILLITON LIMITED – 233.34B
BRK-A BERKSHIRE HATH HLD A – 206.81
PG PROCTER GAMBLE CO – 205.21B
Meanwhile, all my neighbours save one, the kids in my college, the anchor-woman on CBC TV, most students in Engineering School, sales representatives I see taking inventory at large food stores, half my family, my video club, etc. use Dell computers…
” . . . use Dell computers…”
Hopefully, those are aging Dell’s that will be replaced with Macs.
every hero requires a nemesis to which he must transcend
Ok … who’s going to start the Dell Death Knell Counter??
MDN Magic Word: death … as in … well … you know. <grin>
Here is a YouTube video rubbing Apple’s 4x market cap in Dell’s face: