Skip to Content

Flashback: 10 years ago, Michael Dell's throwdown

by Michael Rose Oct 8th 2007 at 5:30PM



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

View Tags

Related Stories

Categories

Apple Corporate Blast From the Past

Remember Michael Dell's legendary snub of Apple's prospects? Back in 1997, Dell was publicly asked what he'd do with the recently...
 

Add a Comment

Sign in »
*0 / 3000 Character Maximum

12 Comments

Filter by:
K.Sako

I Kombucha (kind stocks) to sell. U.S.A in kombucha to people looking for a sale. Details, e-mail us.
For more information: Visit our website: http://www.paw.hi-ho.ne.jp/barasushi-oyaji/

November 05 2007 at 7:38 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
itguy07

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....

October 09 2007 at 1:30 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Me

Don't forget that AAPL just passed Nokia's market cap.

October 09 2007 at 10:14 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
teevee

thank god i got in when i did.

October 09 2007 at 4:00 AM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Raj

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

October 08 2007 at 11:22 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
John

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.

October 08 2007 at 9:41 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
LuminousNerd.com

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)

October 08 2007 at 7:27 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Mo

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…

October 08 2007 at 6:33 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
sam

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.

October 08 2007 at 6:24 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
me

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.

October 08 2007 at 6:14 PM Report abuse rate up rate down Reply
Buy an ad here

Hot Apps on TUAW

Tweets

© 2012 AOL Inc. All Rights Reserved.