The founder of Forrester Research predicts that Apple will bring in more revenue than both IBM and HP by 2012.
[ad#Google Adsense 300×250 in story]Forrester’s George Colony said that HP brought in $126 billion last year and IBM had $99.9 billion, but Apple is the one to watch. With a 52 percent sales growth last year, Colony is predicting big things for Apple.
“They’ll be bigger than IBM next year, and they’ll be bigger than HP the year after that,” said Colony in a Bloomberg interview. “They’re going to be a $200 billion revenue company.”
In the first quarter of 2011, Apple reported a profit of $6 billion on $26.74 billion in revenue. In that quarter, the company sold 4.13 million Macs, a 23 percent unit increase over the year-ago quarter; 16.24 million iPhones, representing 86 percent unit growth over the year-ago quarter; 7.33 million iPads; and 19.45 million iPods.
Apple may soon sell more than IBM but it will take decades, if ever, to catch the world changing research that IBM does.
Perhaps. It’s great to have a large IP (intellectual property) portfolio – and both IMB and Apple have one – but can iBM turn their IP into profitable products that return a good ROI? As the #1 tech company in the US (by market cap) Apple is proving that it can.
Perhaps. What _recent_ IBM research has really changed the world? (I’d claim Apple’s 21st century inventions — particularly iPhone — have been quite a bit more “world-changing”.)
Apple arguably invented the personal computer (it was one of the first). Did that change the world? (IBM didn’t even invent the mainframe. It was to Univac as Microsoft was to Apple.)
Every desktop computer in the world is an imitation of the Mac user interface and underlying architecture (e.g. event model, windowing model). Did that change the world?
Every laptop is an imitation of Apple’s first Powerbook (Apple put the pointing device below the keyboard, popularized the trackpad, etc.). Did that change the world?
Apple invented the PDA (John Sculley coined the term) — even Palm was founded by ex-Apple folk who wanted to proceed with a project that was killed in favor of the Newton. Did that change the world?
Every smartphone on the planet is now an obvious imitation of the iPhone. Did that change the world?
I don’t want to take anything away from IBM which has done a lot of fundamental research, but it’s pretty hard to dismiss Apple’s contributions to the world.
This. +10
Giant Magnetoresistive Head …. and my keyboard.
Snap!
IBM changes the world in its way, and Apple in its way. The idea that you can diminish Apple’s contribution is ridiculous.