Apple made more money during last quarter than Amazon has made in its lifetime

[Greg S]

Throughout 2017, strong smartphone sales helped rake in $48.35 billion in profit for Apple. During the first quarter of 2018, Cupertino pocketed a cool $13.8 billion, compared to Amazon's total net income since starting of around $9.6 billion.

In just three months, Apple was able to profit more than Amazon has made in its entire lifetime. According to Warren Buffett, "If you look at Apple, I think it earns almost twice as much as the second most profitable company in the United States."

Currently, Apple's closest competitor in terms of profit is Google's parent company Alphabet followed by Samsung Electronics and Microsoft. However, Alphabet leads Samsung by little and both are profiting a little below $20 billion annually. Alphabet is the closest tech company in profit to Apple.

On Fortune's Global 500 list with Apple squarely falling first for profitability, Alphabet ranks 9th. Only financial groups and institutions fill in the seven spaces in between.

Goldman Sachs analyst Heath Terry believes that, "We still remain in the early stages of the shift of compute to the cloud and the transition of traditional retail online and, in our opinion, the market is underestimating the long-term financial benefit of both to Amazon." Amazon is still pouring money into improving its own back-end capabilities and pushing the boundaries to find what consumers are willing to pay for its services.

Recent increases in Prime membership pricing and expansions into more hardware ventures could help put Amazon in a better position. As it becomes more economical to buy everyday goods from Amazon instead of driving to the store yourself, Amazon certainly has the potential to place a lot of other businesses at risk of becoming obsolete.

On the other hand, Apple has already established its core market and customer base. Should Apple continue to seek increasing its massive profits, Cupertino will need to find a way to fix its latest problem of being too expensive for the average consumer.

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https://www.techspot.com/news/74606-apple-profited-more-during-q1-2018-than-amazon.html

 

[Mister_K]

But Amazon is providing some amazing services to the world and making a better place, can you say the same about Apple? Nope.

 

[thelatestmodel]

But Amazon is providing some amazing services to the world and making a better place, can you say the same about Apple? Nope.

Both companies are as shitty as each other. Amazon has some horrible working conditions for its employees.

 

[wiyosaya]

But Amazon is providing some amazing services to the world and making a better place, can you say the same about Apple? Nope.

Both companies are as shitty as each other. Amazon has some horrible working conditions for its employees.

I have to agree with this. Besides, crapAzon's search throws back some junk results. If you are not careful when picking something from those results to buy, you might get junk. I do not like having to adopt a buyer-beware attitude when browsing crapAzon, therefore, I often go elsewhere when I would have gone there. Not to mention that they force storing a credit card rather than asking.

crApple also has, as is well-known, some horrible working conditions.

 

[DelJo63]

I do not like having to adopt a buyer-beware attitude when browsing crapAzon, therefore, I often go elsewhere when I would have gone there. Not to mention that they force storing a credit card rather than asking.

Sadly, it's come to Buyer Beware - - everywhere!

 

[hood6558]

Both companies are only designed to make money for the owners/stockholders, while screwing the people who do the actual work. The modern equivalent of slavery, without the job security and free housing. As for Amazon "providing some amazing services to the world", that's a laugh. What they mostly do is convince people to buy things they don't really need, with money they don't really have, at a quality level far below their standards - cheap Chinese junk delivered overnight right to your door. I only use Amazon for cheap auto parts, to help my broke friends get their cars running. I would never buy Apple's overpriced junk for any reason.

 

[wiyosaya]

I do not like having to adopt a buyer-beware attitude when browsing crapAzon, therefore, I often go elsewhere when I would have gone there. Not to mention that they force storing a credit card rather than asking.

Sadly, it's come to Buyer Beware - - everywhere!

In general, I agree. However, try a search at B & H, and try the same search at crapAzon. For example, something like "1TB SSD". Personally, I think the search results from B & H are significantly more relevant. At crapAzon you get a hybrid drive in the first 8 or 9 results - but not at B & H. Maybe this is a bad example, but there are other searches at crapAzon I have run which seem to just throw stuff at the wall hoping something sticks.

If you ask me, crapAzon wants people to impulse buy and that is the reason behind their "One Click" button. Impulse buying, IMO, can be gamed, or socially engineered - if you wish, by detuning search results to include similar items that do not exactly match the search - like the hybrid drive.

 

[wiyosaya]

Both companies are only designed to make money for the owners/stockholders, while screwing the people who do the actual work. The modern equivalent of slavery, without the job security and free housing. As for Amazon "providing some amazing services to the world", that's a laugh. What they mostly do is convince people to buy things they don't really need, with money they don't really have, at a quality level far below their standards - cheap Chinese junk delivered overnight right to your door. I only use Amazon for cheap auto parts, to help my broke friends get their cars running. I would never buy Apple's overpriced junk for any reason.

I would also add to this, screwing, if possible, the customer, too.

 

[TheBigT42]

Both companies are only designed to make money for the owners/stockholders, while screwing the people who do the actual work. The modern equivalent of slavery.

LOL I don't think you know what slavery is

 

[Mister_K]

Both companies are as shitty as each other. Amazon has some horrible working conditions for its employees.

True for the warehouses, still better than your average factory setup.

 

[Mister_K]

I have to agree with this. Besides, crapAzon's search throws back some junk results. If you are not careful when picking something from those results to buy, you might get junk. I do not like having to adopt a buyer-beware attitude when browsing crapAzon, therefore, I often go elsewhere when I would have gone there. Not to mention that they force storing a credit card rather than asking.

crApple also has, as is well-known, some horrible working conditions.

Not sure about that. While Amazons UX on the web and app is pretty shitty, it does provide me a place TO GO when getting things quickly. For example ordering office supplies and what not. Don't forget the whole data center/server infrastructure they have and that is powering half the web. Together with Google Compute, it is one of the best and most powerful hosting environments in town.

 

[Reachable]

Apple is able to make all this profit because it takes grotesque advantage of it's loyal followers.

But MUCH more alarming is Amazon's lack of profit. Their strategy has been to demolish the rest of the retail landscape by undercutting and expanding and foregoing profit. Eventually they will be in position to give their stockholders all the profit they crave.

.... unless they are stopped.

 

[dkryder]

Apple started in 1976. amazon in 1994. so compare the stats of each company after same length of time in business, perhaps 25 years. what were apples figures in 2001? compare that to amazon figures in 2019, next year. that would place each companies growth in the same time span instead of giving apple an additional 18 years of growth over amazon in the figures presented.

 

[Impudicus]

Oh the fruits of affordable labor.