Woah! Apple Worth More Than Microsoft And Intel Combined
At the close of markets today, Apple has a bigger market cap than Microsoft and Intel combined (the so-called Wintel alliance). — Here's how much Apple, Microsoft and Intel are worth on Wall St.: — Apple (AAPL) — $317.60 billion
Context & Ripple Effects
This is the second such threshold crossing on record for Apple: back in October 2007 the company passed IBM in market value as the iPhone ramp began, and four years later its $317.60 billion capitalization now exceeds Microsoft and Intel — the 'Wintel' pair that defined the PC era — combined.
The gap has been building rather than sudden: an earlier analysis of Microsoft's 'Wal-Mart Disease' framed its large-but-low-growth earnings against Apple's expansion economics. The same week, Apple marked ten years of its retail stores with iPad-based 'Smart Sign' guides and was named among bidders for Nortel's 6,000-plus patent trove, while comScore data showed its U.S. smartphone share growing only slightly.
First-order effects
- Apple's $317.60 billion market cap now exceeds Microsoft and Intel combined, meaning investors price the single integrated device maker above the two companies whose alliance dominated PC economics for two decades.
- Microsoft enters E3 facing pressure to show new revenue vectors beyond Windows and Office, with its rumored Xbox LIVE subscription TV service among the unconfirmed plans circulating this week.
Second-order effects
- Intel's valuation is chained to the PC refresh cycle Apple increasingly bypasses with its own silicon and devices, pushing Intel toward mobile and embedded markets where Windows Phone's Music+Videos Hub push shows Microsoft fighting for the same content-discovery ground.
- Apple's cash position — reinforced by its reported interest in Nortel's patents — lets it buy defensive IP while rivals compete on price and share, per the comScore data showing only marginal U.S. smartphone share gains.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, industry value keeps consolidating around companies that own hardware, software, retail distribution (the ten-year-old store network) and services together, eroding the complementary-vendor model where OS, chip, and box were valued separately.
- Market-cap milestone comparisons like the 2007 IBM crossing become the standard scoreboard for the transition from the Wintel alliance to vertically integrated consumer-device platforms.
The trend: Valuation leadership in computing is shifting from the loosely coupled Wintel ecosystem to vertically integrated device-and-services companies, with each Apple market-cap milestone marking another step in that transfer.