IBM Outperforms Even Apple: Smarter Planet, Big Data and Cloud Power the Future

IBM is a great company and all, but the idea that IT services will outperform all other IT related sectors is <i>interesting</i>..<p>Services are - by their nature - always related to head count. In the old days - 10 years ago - Microsoft dominated financially because they could resell shink-wrapped software better than anyone else.<p>Customising software can be lucratitive, but it is difficult to make it as profitable as reselling copies of the same bits over and over again.<p>Indeed - one could argue that Apple has simply out-Microsofted Microsoft now. They resell the same software <i>and hardware</i> and make almost MS-like profit margins (even taking the higher material costs of hardware ino account)

Funny that he's praising IBM for something as meaningless as a YTD stock price change, and then goes on to complain about Amazon and conveniently ignores that its stock price outperforms IBM at every level.<p><a href="http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=ibm+vs+aapl+vs+amzn" rel="nofollow">http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=ibm+vs+aapl+vs+amzn</a>

IBM is <i>very</i> good at acquiring companies, rebranding acquired products as Big Blue offerings, and then pumping these down the established sales pipe to their enterprise customers. Notice that global services is the majority of their revenues - 57% - (<a href="http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/International_Business_Machines_%28IBM%29" rel="nofollow">http://www.wikinvest.com/stock/International_Business_Machin...</a>)<p>Oh, if only I could hack into that beautiful stream of out-sourced services money . . . (hint, hint)

I will be surprised if IBM soon becomes the most valuable company, a very small probability for example...if iphone-n turns out to be a flop microsoft struggles in post of era.