One year ago, I wrote a blog post to mark the fact that Microsoft's quarterly results were better than IBM's, and that what had been a tiny start-up when it supplied IBM with PC DOS had overtaken a company that had had a monopoly market share of corporate data processing since the 1930s. Nobody expected that.
Of course, nowadays, both companies are trying to move from fading legacy businesses into fast-growing cloud-based businesses. And, like Apple, both have been hit by "headwinds" in the form of a strengthening dollar, which has devalued their overseas earnings.
IBM had also set itself up for a fall by selling its System X (Intel x86 server) business to Lenovo. This boosted IBM's profits when the deal went through, but hurt its revenues over the full year.
As a result, IBM's revenues fell by 8.5 percent to $22.1 billion in its latest quarter, and its profits fell by 18.6 percent to $4.5 billion. In the same quarter, Microsoft's revenues fell by 2 percent to $25.7 billion, but its profits grew by 8 percent to $6.3 billion.
This was IBM's 15th straight quarter of revenue declines, and in after-hours trading, its shares fell by 4.9 percent to $121.86, the lowest for five years. After Microsoft's results, by contrast, its shares jumped by "more than 8 percent in after-hours trading, but then gave back some of those gains", according to CNBC.
In its full year results, IBM's revenues dipped to $81.7bn, a fall of 11.9 percent. This is a level IBM first achieved in 1998, when Microsoft's turnover was $15.3bn and a struggling Apple could only manage $5.9bn. For comparison, Microsoft's revenues were $88.1bn in calendar 2015, while Apple managed an astonishing $235bn.
IBM peaked at $107bn in 2011, and looks unlikely to see that number again.
Either way, IBM's $81.7bn was some way behind the $93.6bn that Microsoft achieved in its fiscal 2015 results, declared in June. This substantiated my claim that Microsoft really was bigger than IBM.
Read More: http://www.zdnet.com/article/ibm-vs-microsoft-and-the-battle-for-the-corporate-cloud-business/
Of course, nowadays, both companies are trying to move from fading legacy businesses into fast-growing cloud-based businesses. And, like Apple, both have been hit by "headwinds" in the form of a strengthening dollar, which has devalued their overseas earnings.
IBM had also set itself up for a fall by selling its System X (Intel x86 server) business to Lenovo. This boosted IBM's profits when the deal went through, but hurt its revenues over the full year.
As a result, IBM's revenues fell by 8.5 percent to $22.1 billion in its latest quarter, and its profits fell by 18.6 percent to $4.5 billion. In the same quarter, Microsoft's revenues fell by 2 percent to $25.7 billion, but its profits grew by 8 percent to $6.3 billion.
This was IBM's 15th straight quarter of revenue declines, and in after-hours trading, its shares fell by 4.9 percent to $121.86, the lowest for five years. After Microsoft's results, by contrast, its shares jumped by "more than 8 percent in after-hours trading, but then gave back some of those gains", according to CNBC.
In its full year results, IBM's revenues dipped to $81.7bn, a fall of 11.9 percent. This is a level IBM first achieved in 1998, when Microsoft's turnover was $15.3bn and a struggling Apple could only manage $5.9bn. For comparison, Microsoft's revenues were $88.1bn in calendar 2015, while Apple managed an astonishing $235bn.
IBM peaked at $107bn in 2011, and looks unlikely to see that number again.
Either way, IBM's $81.7bn was some way behind the $93.6bn that Microsoft achieved in its fiscal 2015 results, declared in June. This substantiated my claim that Microsoft really was bigger than IBM.
Read More: http://www.zdnet.com/article/ibm-vs-microsoft-and-the-battle-for-the-corporate-cloud-business/
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