A recent Vanity Fair article focusing on "Microsoft's Lost Decade" has put Redmond's troubles in a very interesting light, noting that Apple's iPhone -- a product that didn't even exist until five years ago -- is now worth more than all of Microsoft's products put together.
Exactly how big is the iPhone? According to Forbes, it's worth more than all of Microsoft's products put together -- at least when you look at the numbers.
"One Apple product, something that didn’t exist five years ago, has higher sales than everything Microsoft has to offer," a recent Vanity Fair article notes. "More than Windows, Office, Xbox, Bing, Windows Phone, and every other product that Microsoft has created since 1975. In the quarter ended March 31, 2012, iPhone had sales of $22.7 billion; Microsoft Corporation, $17.4 billion."
This isn't exactly news -- after all, Apple's fortunes have been rising in recent years as its once formidable rival on the desktop front has been on the decline. But Forbes makes the argument that the iPhone is actually worth more than Microsoft, a pretty staggering claim for those of us who remember the dark days at Apple in the mid-1990's.
"Too much of the value that we ascribe to Apple is of the entire ecosystem, including the company’s reputation for style, for us to really be able to pull out separate market valuations for a specific product," the Forbes article notes.
While Apple's fortunes are soaring on the stock market, it ultimately comes down to the raw sales data -- and how Apple has managed to capitalize on it.
"And the thing is, that’s not really the most remarkable thing about Apple’s recent achievements," Forbes concludes. "The truly strange thing is that they’ve managed to gain this level of sales while making software style margins on selling hardware. That’s the trick that no one else is managing at all."
Follow this article’s author, J.R. Bookwalter on Twitter
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