MacDailyNews Take: Apple earned $15.70 billion, not $15.07 billion, in revenue last quarter.
Elmer-DeWitt continues, “But it was not to be — at least not yet. Microsoft (MSFT) reported its fourth quarter earnings… of $0.51 on record sales of $16.04 billion, up 22% year over year.”
“But Steve Ballmer’s lead over Steve Jobs’s lead may not last long. For the quarter that ends in September, Apple is forecasting sales of $18 billion,” Elmer-DeWitt reports.
Full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: It’s always nice to have something to look forward to and — Microsoft shareholders, look away — it’s certainly not Ballmer’s lead; the money Microsoft makes is in spite of its CEO. Hopefully, this quells talk of a Microsoft CEO coup for at least another quarter. May Ballmer remain Microsoft CEO for as long as it takes!
Everybody knows this won’t last. Apple has the momentum.
Fine by me. Let Ballmer use this to camouflage his incompetence a little while longer.
Oops. The writer must have accidentally transposed the numbers on Apple’s earnings. They reported $15.70 billion in revenue for the quarter.
Bugger . . . . . ‘puts bottle back in cellar for three months’.
How can that company make so much money peddling such crap to the world?
@ MacBill
There’s just no accounting for bad taste, except for that 16M though..
Damn…
Looks like it’s about time for me to go get another bottle of Dom Perignon to put on ice.
Gonna need it soon…
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May Ballmer remain CEO for as long as it takes… *hic*
Sorry, 16.04B..
15.07 vs. 15.70
It’s funny- the “rounding errors” the ANALists make never work in Apple’s favor…
September will be the turning point. If Apple forecasts 18B, we know it’ll easily pass it. And what about the quarter after the holidays?? NOBODY buys a copy of Windows or Office for Christmas!!!!
I’m sure Microsoft does not really care about this “race,” and Apple does not either. What matters is that Apple is heading up, and Microsoft is (at best) stagnant.
Apple sold a record number of iPhone 4s at launch and can’t keep up with demand. Microsoft launched Kin (after two+ years of development) and cancelled it a few weeks later, after supposedly selling only a few hundred units. Windows Phone 7 is still not launched and does not look too promising as competition for iPhone, Blackberry, or Android.
Apple released iPad, sold 3 million units in 80 days, and can’t keep up with demand. Microsoft can’t get any of its hardware “partners” to use Windows 7 in a tablet product (one that’s not an ugly “convertible” monster). HP, Microsoft largest partner for Windows, gave up and bought Palm to try again with WebOS.
Apple sold a record number of Macs in the last completed quarter and will no doubt easily break that record in the current quarter; Mac sales growth is easily beating the industry average. The rest of the industry, which makes up most of that “average,” uses Windows.
Just having fun speculating here, but lets say a large corporation is about to be embarrassed by another large, but typically smaller corporation. So let’s say that large corporation decides to play, oh I don’t know, accounting games with their revenue so they squeak by that typically smaller corporation. Now that could never happen, right? No one would ever find out about it, right? Ahhh, speculation is fun. No, I’d know a thing, just having fun at ms’s expense. And long live ballmer!
I’m just grateful that Apple, Microsoft, others are making global profits. The Apple/Microsoft feud is history in my book – Apple won. This is 2010 and it’s a tough world out there.
Told you so, MAC sheep. It’s always “wait until next year” with you losers.
Great job, Microsoft!
Your potential. Our passion.™
Where is Nokia Tang when we need him?
@ Mac Fan
accounting tricks get caught, look here, about DELL !
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-22/dell-agrees-to-pay-100-million-to-settle-sec-fraud-claims.html
Zune Tang is laughable!! Poor devil…
All the PC apologists on Gizmodo are talking about how there’s “no way” Apple would have more revenue than MS, and that MS is still crushing Apple.
It’s going to be a bitter day in October for those fools.
Must be a rounding error…
I wonder how much deferred revenue Microsoft used to stay ahead of Apple.
Someone should scrutinize Microsoft’s books. I think the numbers are fudged!
Whew, saved by that automatic money generating revenue BS that we have in place for over 20 years. Yipeeeeee!
Of course Microsoft beat Apple. They’ve had more than enough time to cook the books after seeing Apple’s results.
The bastards.
@ Macromancer
Those guys are complete idiots. That number is so close, its not even near the word “crush” to describe that number. More like “squeaks by” as MDN puts it. That squeak description is not about Ballmer farting. That’s more like a Super Oil Tanker blow horn!
It’ll be surpassed by end of this weekend, if the iPad+iPhone sales lead were true.
All Hail Ballmer for another year!
WOW – Just WOW
Dell cooked the books for 5 years!
They would have missed expectations every quarter without exclusivity payments from Intel. LMAO
Oh and by the way did I mention WOW
@ Jubei
Yup, The difference in revenue is less than 2%. Like i said, they really are clueless as to what these numbers mean, i doubt many of them even know what a market cap is, or even EPS ratios or anything else thats investing 101.
They are going to have to come up with a new excuse come October.
@SamLowry
Missster Lowry…. Sam… Lowry..
Sorry, I got no response to what you said, I just wanted to say … Missssster Lowry….
Wow and now u will have have star craft war craft new ff mom Warcraft stat wars oldnrep kinect m$ heading ton big year
@Eric spielberg,
Cut back on the acid, dude.
All a malicious website would have to do to surreptitiously extract Address Book card data from Safari is dynamically create form text fields with the aforementioned names, probably invisibly, and then simulate A-Z keystroke events using JavaScript. When data is populated, that is AutoFill’ed, it can be accessed and sent to the attacker.
Still, such attacks could be easily and cheaply distributed on a mass scale using an advertising network where likely no one would ever notice because it’s not exploit code designed to deliver rootkit payload. In fact, there is no guarantee this has not already taken place. What is safe to say is that this vulnerability is so brain dead simple that I assumed someone else must have publicly reported it already, but exhaustive searches and asking several colleagues turned up nothing.
Because of the tremendous amount of licensing revenue microsoft has, they have leeway as far as whichever quarter, or even year, they can legally accrue some revenue. During flush times they have announced pushing accruals forward. Not too long ago they restated earnings lower for some past quarters. Apparently this is all okay with the SEC.
“Missster Lowry…. Sam… Lowry..”
Sam Lowry: Can you fix it?
Harry Tuttle: No, I can’t. But, I can bypass it.
just wait till next quarter where Microsoft cant play around with numbers to get it as closet to Apple as possible.
@Zune Tang – “Wait until Next Year” was what Microsoft had been saying about Windows Phone/Mobile 7 so I think it’s probably a good time to change your home team. Perhaps HP Tang????
You know what’s funny is I’m sure those ads that MS ran a while back with “Lauren” and the others talking about how they were going to a place that sells “cheap crap” and then they walk up to an HP computer and point at it with glee… And of course MS is calling what HP makes cheap crap while completely neglecting to mention their own actual cheap crap (Windows) in the ad. I’m sure that went over really well with the management at HP and JUST might have added some incentive to buy Palm and try to unhinge themselves from MS.
MS has been on a downward trajectory for years; and uncle fester is the architect. May he indeed remain in charge as long as it takes!
How many boxes of Windows and Office are flying around the planet right now to temporarily stuff the channel, book extra sales for extra revenues, before getting returned to Redmond?
TYPICAL MS BS.
WAIT FOR APPLE TO RELEASE SOMETHING, AND THEN COPY IT TO MATCH IT.
sure is a lot of fanboy (both sides) crap hanging around this…time will tell of course it apple can sustain the rage or if this was a revenue spikes from early adopters…A couple of quarters should show enough trend to give a clearer picture of where apple is headed. I fear that this is unsustainable as it seems most iphone 4 customers were replacing earlier versions and ipad could a big jump but the android competitors aren’t far away from making their presence felt. It also seems talk of the demise of the kindle were very premature. So lets not count the chickens before they have hatched…
The writing is on the wall. The mobile realm — where the bulk of future computing revenue will lie — belongs to Apple, Google and, to a far lesser extent, RIM. HP may or may not be able to get something happening with WebOS; time will tell.
Windows Phone Convoluted Series 7 has missed the boat with its tardiness…it will be lucky to pick up 5% of the smartphone market. There’s simply no compelling reason for the consumer to buy this thing, and the early previews already note the clunky, unintuitive interface. Amazing that after all this time and money spent, with the future of the company riding in it, MS still can’t get a user interface done right.
okay, so im really trying to do my best for this sotra short story im writing (but i think its going to be a bit longer then i expected). on a previous question. i posted the intro/ first part of this story. i got a lot of comets telling me that the story was good but i needed to limit my detailing
http://www.articlesbase.com/computers-articles/parental-control-a-complete-parental-control-software-review-2130892.html
@Brulek- But the only thing is that Apple’s rise didn’t just begin with the iPhone 4 and the iPad. This rise has been going on steadily for 15 years or so since Jobs came back. I’m not a Jobs fanboy, but even his worst enemy can’t deny he brought the company out of desperate times all the way to where it is now. So my opinion is that if Apple stays on course and keeps doing what they’ve been doing over the recent years then they’ll be leaving Microsoft in the dust sooner than later.
As for the Android, whether it fails or succeeds I personally don’t believe it really matters. Apple is simply on a different level than Google or any other competitor for that matter. Apple creates consumers who are passionate about their devices and the brand itself. The typical Apple customer tends to make and take Apple and Apple products very personal in their everyday lives. Even though it pisses alot of people off, it’s simply an element that can’t be ignored and must be factored into Apples overall long term success.
Also I don’t see how the Kindle matters whether it stays or goes. We’re comparing apples and oranges with the Kindle and iPad. Out of 225,000 things the iPad can currently do, the Kindle can only do 1 and that’s the book reader.
These are just my opinions up for discussion if anyone so chooses. Brulek I’m not the type to slam anybody so please don’t take it that way. Peace.
@MacBill
“How can that company make so much money peddling such crap to the world?”
Cause Apple doesn’t license it’s OS.
I can understand why people buy MS OS and MS Office.
What I cannot understand is why, in these tough economic times, are people prepared to pay so much for them.
Let’s help. Everyone’s goal should be to get a friend to buy one new Mac by Oct. Remind them of the edu. special, buy a Mac for college a free iPod touch (it might cover refurbs also, worth to ask). It covers employees of colleges as well. And if you buy off the Apple site you can even get the usual free color printer ($99 value) what could be better value—a free iPod Touch AND printer.
Now if Apple opened that up to EVERYONE for a brief time, you’d see a bigger spike in sales. Would be enough to knock MicroSloth out of the park.