Filed under: Apple Corporate, Blast From the Past
Flashback: 10 years ago, Michael Dell's throwdown
Remember Michael Dell's legendary snub of Apple's prospects? Back in 1997, Dell was publicly asked what he'd do with the recently re-Steve'd Apple if given the opportunity. "I'd shut it down and give the money back to the shareholders," said Dell, earning the people's denigration and infamy forever. Of course, how could he possibly know?
Fast forward 10 years, and Dell's $62B market capitalization is dwarfed by Apple's $144B valuation. AAPL is trading at all-time highs, possibly portending a split, and the July prediction of AAPL passing IBM's $160B cap (!) is starting to look more rational every day -- but first it'll likely pass Intel's $149B. That's a lot of value that, shamefully, Apple has created for shareholders instead of taking Michael Dell's sage advice and throwing in the towel back in '97. Don't feel bad for MD, though; as Apple 2.0 notes, he's personally worth about 15 billion dollars. Seems like there's money to be made at both ends of the computer quality spectrum.
via Apple 2.0
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Seth A said 5:53PM on 10-08-2007
Oh did I make a good choice around 2003 when I bought a few hundred shares of Apple at $12 each. And to think it had nothing to do with knowing the future of the stock market, it was just because I love Apple.
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me said 6:14PM on 10-08-2007
i sold my house this summer and got 250K from it. i tried to convince my wife into putting it into AAPL stock but she said no. Looks like we're out 217K by not putting it in. Oh well.
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me said 6:15PM on 10-08-2007
i sold my house this summer and got 250K from it. i tried to convince my wife into putting it into AAPL stock but she said no. Looks like we're out 217K by not putting it in. Oh well.
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sam said 6:24PM on 10-08-2007
nice post. it's too bad apple's quality has been suffering lately though that they can't really be considered completely on the opposite end of the quality spectrum from dell.
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Mo said 6:33PM on 10-08-2007
Only another $140B before Apple's surpasses Microsoft's market cap :)
Mind you, if Microsoft carries on the way it has been of late, it'll only take 18 months…
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Jt Hollister said 7:27PM on 10-08-2007
I don't get it...why would he say something so dumb? It was a profitable company even back then, although far less profitable...and there is absolutely NO reason to throw in the towel on a profitable company.
Thanks for sharing this, finally something by someone other than Erica XD (no offense to Erica, I'm just not a fan)
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John said 6:51AM on 10-09-2007
You know, it was the hassle of dealing with the ridiculous amount of bloat-ware on my last Dell machine that ultimately put me over the edge and got me to make switch to an Intel-based Mac. So, umm, thank you Michael Dell.
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ukickmydog (NDF - Earth) said 11:22PM on 10-08-2007
the hype ratio isn't good, that market price isn't what it's really worth, but hell, there's good money to be made
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io said 4:00AM on 10-09-2007
thank god i got in when i did.
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Mike said 10:15AM on 10-09-2007
Don't forget that AAPL just passed Nokia's market cap.
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itguy07 said 1:31PM on 10-09-2007
What would be interesting if Apple buys a bunch of MS stock. They could be a 51% owner of MS and pretty much do whatever they want - fill Office for Macs, kill Exchange, migrate to OS X server, etc....
That would be the ultimate F-U to MS if Apple got a majority stake in them....
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