Archive for the ‘Figures’ Category

Bloggers can outshine the professional analysts too

Thursday, January 20th, 2011

Amateur analysts can do as well as the pros on Wall Street – sometimes even outshine them.

Horace Dediu – a blogger writing from his home in Helsinki – is the most accurate analyst covering Apple Inc.

An ex-Nokia Oyj worker, Dediu has published on his blog the most accurate estimates about Apple for the past four quarters, beating professional analysts from reputable companies like Morgan Stanley, Citigroup and Deutsche Bank.
Horace Dediu as seen on Facebook
This is based on a tally maintained by another blogger, Daniel Tello.

According to Adam Satariano of Bloomberg,

“Dediu and Tello are part of a cadre of amateur analysts who study Apple and post their insights on personal blogs and websites such as Mac Observer’s Apple Finance Board. Their accuracy projecting Apple’s performance — data that can help predict stock movements — is giving investors a free alternative to Wall Street and creating a rivalry with the pros.”

Tello says that “Competitiveness with Wall Street analysts is a natural consequence of us bloggers backing each other as the
‘underdogs.’”

Read the full story on Bloomberg.

iPad costs a quarter more in the UK than in the US

Monday, May 31st, 2010

The ipad costs more outside of the US, Reuters said, citing  an Australian CommSec study.

Prices of the iPads were the cheapest in the US, while prices in Europe, especially the UK, were the highest – almost a quarter of the price higher.

Chart of Apple iPad prices across the world

Apple iPad prices varies worldwide

The prices of the entry level 16 GB WiFi only iPad and the top end 64 GB WiFi + 3G version were both collated and converted to the equivalent US Dollars.

The tablet device is targeted at the niche between a laptop and a smartphone, with a form factor suited for surfing the web, watching movies and reading electronic books. It can also run apps designed for the iPhone as well as apps specially customised for it.

The detailed data is tabulated below.

(more…)

Was it the iPad that propelled Apple past Microsoft?

Friday, May 28th, 2010

Curious as to how Apple has upstaged Microsoft in terms of market capitalisation, I plotted the market capitalisation of Apple against Microsoft between 1 June 2009 to 26 May 2010 (at monthly intervals except for the final data point).

Chart of Apple vs Microsoft in terms of market capitalisation

Was it the iPad that helped Apple overtake Microsoft?

Seems like the gap between Microsoft and Apple remained rather constant at  roughly US$60-80 billion until the announcement of the iPad by Steve Jobs on 27 Jan 2010 to a packed audience in the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts in San Francisco.

There was no looking back afterwards as the iPad was launched in April and sold its first million unit on May 3 after merely 28 days. This was less than half the 74 days it took the hugely successful iPhone to sell its first million units.

The gap between Microsoft and Apple closed rapidly until this week, when Apple finally overtook Microsoft in terms of market capitalisation.

At the rate it’s going, it won’t be long before Apple overtakes Exxon Mobil as the most valuable company in the US.

Clash of the Titans

Thursday, May 20th, 2010

We’ve been reading so much about the intense competition between the behemoths in the IT industry. Apple vs Adobe over Flash on iPhone/iPad. Apple vs Gizmodo over lost 4G iPhone. Apple vs Google over mobile search and smartphone OS. Apple vs Google vs Microsoft over everything.

How big are these companies relative to each other? I checked out the Market Capitalisation (share value x number of shares) of these companies on the Nasdaq from Yahoo Finance and put them on a chart for comparison. As at end of 19 May 2010:

Bar chart of the market capitalisation of Adobe, Apple, Microsoft and Google

Market Capitalisation of the IT behemoths

Everybody knows Microsoft (US$247.1b) is the biggest IT company in the world, while Steve Jobs would love to think of Apple as a small and nimble outfit. In reality, Apple (US$226b) is fast catching up on Microsoft in terms of market cap. No wonder its new found confidence has found expression in so many arenas. Adobe (US$17.31b) is not even one-tenth of Apple. Maybe Apple should just buy over Adobe. I haven’t even bothered to check how much Gizmodo is worth.

By the way, Google (US$157.5b) is still some way off compared to Microsoft and Apple.

Search engine rankings in 2010

Wednesday, May 19th, 2010

What are the market shares for the three main search engine giants on the internet for the 3 months from February to April of 2010? Here are some data from COMSCORE:

Chart of the market shares of the three top search engine from Feruary to April 2010

Search engine rankings from February to April 2010

Google continues to enjoy the lion’s share of the search market at around 65% for each of the three months from February to April 2010. Yahoo comes in second with about 17% while Microsoft’s Bing brings up the rear at 12% (percentages averaged and rounded).