Revenue is a dangerous barometer for success. Companies that rise fast, fall fast - our tech and corporate history is littered with failed and marginal companies that use to have high revenues and profits. Many high revenue companies 1-4 decades ago don't exist or are a shadow of their formal selves. Revenues should not be used as an excuse to ignore big mistakes companies make. MS used their revenues as an excuse to do a bad job on their core OS and let their main Windows hardware licensees do a bad job and paid a high price. Yet before every other player started beating their revenue in various markets anyone pointing out Microsoft mistakes (like me for most of early 2000s) was pointed to revenues and profits as proof of sound decisions.
If revenues and profit are your yardstick then Apple was a failure most of the time people owned and enjoyed Macs compared to Microsoft. When Macs were better arguably than Windows machines, revenue would be a bad yardstick to evaluate them historically for example. Yet those low profit/revenue days helped them sharpen their sword for later battles.
There are metrics to evaluate a company beyond revenue - mostly velocity -- up and down in comparison ton competitors. Surface Pro has proven to be a "comeback kid" setting revenue records and the upward velocity is good. iPhones with larger form factors continue to have upward velocity.
Measuring companies success in future is best determined by reading books like Tipping Point, Crossing The Chasm, Selling The Wheel and most books by Jack Trout which have been pretty good information bases to predict who thrives and dies in Corporate wars.
On Tue, Dec 15, 2015 at 1:02 PM, Jim Saklad jimdoc@icloud.com [iPad] <iPad@yahoogroups.com> wrote:
> Jobs' design sense may be what saved Apple. That and a persistent anti-Microsoft sentiment among loyalists and admirers.
>
> Lately, Microsoft has been doing better in the image department, and Apple's been slipping in the innovation and design departments.
How about their respective *revenue* departments?
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Jim Saklad mailto:jimdoc@icloud.com
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Posted by: Myrddin Wyllt <myrddinwyllt1964@gmail.com>
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