{"id":10478,"date":"2012-04-20T12:40:54","date_gmt":"2012-04-20T10:40:54","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/?p=10478"},"modified":"2012-04-20T14:08:38","modified_gmt":"2012-04-20T12:08:38","slug":"tech-heavyweights-compared","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/internet\/10478\/tech-heavyweights-compared\/","title":{"rendered":"Tech heavyweights compared"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft<\/a> is looking to take on Apple<\/a> and Google’s<\/a> domination of the mobile market, but how does the world’s largest software company compare?<\/p>\n

In its latest earnings report, Microsoft reported third-quarter profit of $5.11 billion (R39.88 billion), or 60 US cents (R4.68) per share, compared with $5.23 billion (R40.82 billion), or 61 US cents (R4.76) per share, reported last year.<\/p>\n

Profit beat analysts\u2019 average forecast of 57 cents per share, according to a Reuters report.<\/p>\n

The results created a sense of optimism around the company, which is lining up Windows 8 for later this year – and is looking to make a dent into Apple Inc and Google Inc\u2019s domination of the mobile market.<\/p>\n

But how does Microsoft compare to the companies it wants to take on?<\/p>\n

Stock snapshot<\/strong><\/p>\n

BusinessTech compiled this snapshot of the biggest global tech companies’ share prices and market capital, to scope out how they compare.<\/p>\n

Included in the comparison, are big social media and Internet companies – a space which social network giant, Facebook, will be entering into with its imminent IPO.<\/p>\n

\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n
Company<\/strong><\/td>\nNASDAQ<\/strong><\/td>\nShare Price (USD)<\/strong><\/td>\nMarket capital (mUSD)<\/strong><\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Apple<\/td>\nAAPL<\/td>\n587.95<\/td>\n547,711.44<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Microsoft<\/td>\nMSFT<\/td>\n31.05<\/td>\n260,510.86<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
IBM<\/td>\nIBM<\/td>\n199.42<\/td>\n231,164.59<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Google<\/td>\nGOOG<\/td>\n600.00<\/td>\n195,280.42<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Cisco<\/td>\nCSCO<\/td>\n19.92<\/td>\n107,207.10<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Amazon.com<\/td>\nAMZN<\/td>\n191.17<\/td>\n86,091.16<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Groupon<\/td>\nGRPN<\/td>\n11.81<\/td>\n7,583.27<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n
Zynga<\/td>\nZNGA<\/td>\n9.61<\/td>\n6,909.25<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table><\/div>\n

Share prices taken from trade on the NASDAQ (12:15 CAT).<\/p>\n

Facebook’s debut<\/strong><\/p>\n

Facebook’s entry into the stock market is rumoured to kick off with its initial public offering (IPO) as early as mid-May.<\/p>\n

The social networking company, founded in 2004 by Mark Zuckerburg<\/a> in a Harvard University dorm room, is expected to be valued at around $100 billion (R780 billion).<\/p>\n

This would make it the biggest-ever intial offering by an Internet company.<\/p>\n

By comparison, the largest IPO to date for an Internet company was Google’s (GOOG) IPO, where the search giant raised $1.9 billion (R14.83 billion) in August 2004. The company offered 19,605,052 shares at a price of $85 (today, R663.42) per share, according to their annual report.<\/p>\n

Conversions made at US$1 = R7.80.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Microsoft is looking to take on Apple and Google’s domination of the mobile market, but how does the world’s largest software company compare?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":14,"featured_media":10485,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9882],"tags":[657,51,1358,45,53,153,26,169,1302],"class_list":["post-10478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-internet","tag-amazon","tag-apple","tag-cisco","tag-facebook","tag-google","tag-groupon","tag-headline","tag-microsoft","tag-zynga"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/14"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10478"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":10489,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10478\/revisions\/10489"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/10485"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/businesstech.co.za\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}