Apple reported record revenues earlier this week but Microsoft had a blowout quarter of its own, reporting revenues Thursday of $16.04 billion — enough to keep the Redmond giant ahead of the Cupertino company in this particular financial metric.
Apple remains the most valuable high-tech company by a fair margin. And, perhaps more importantly, when Apple exceeded expectations on Tuesday shareholders cheered, adding about $7 per share from the previous day, before the after-hours earnings report.
Microsoft’s superb quarter was greeted, instead, with crickets. Shares in the company were actually down fractionally in after-hours trading.
“It’s a great quarter — but does that matter?” Colin Gillis, analyst at BGC Partners, told Reuters. “We all knew the business refresh cycle was in place. This is the dilemma for Microsoft — how do they get the stock moving again?”
The stock chart above tells the story: For the past five years Apple has screamed, and Microsoft has coasted. Fair? If you think the market is by definition never wrong, that’s not even a fair question.
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