Apple Is Not The Most Valuable Company In The History Of The World

Re:Apple Is Not The Most Valuable Company In The History Of ... by tedunangst on Tuesday August 21, 2012 @12:28AM (#4411187)

When are these numbers ever inflation adjusted? Biggest grossing movie of all time inflation adjusted is still Gone With the Wind, but that didn't really stop people from talking about Titanic or Avatar.

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Re:Apple Is Not The Most Valuable Company In The History Of ... by tolmasky on Tuesday August 21, 2012 @01:04AM (#4411273)

Well, funny enough, if you look at the hacker news thread about Avatar hitting 1B, it is in fact discussed (one of the people mentioning it is me).

I stand by this, just as with movies: it matters. If not these numbers are completely arbitrary and meaningless. It is equivalent to comparing, numerically, the price of one company in Pesos vs the price of another in Dollars, it would make no sense unless they are both converted into the same unit. In this case, we don't even have to go that far back: even Microsoft's market cap in 1999 (adjusted for inflation) was more.

Edit: link http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1079716

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Re:Apple Is Not The Most Valuable Company In The History Of ... by tedunangst on Tuesday August 21, 2012 @02:13AM (#4411379)

Oh, I kind of agree, but this just seems like "neener, neener, not the biggest."

To take a different angle, computers and electronics have only gotten cheaper since 1967. So maybe Apple should be compared to a deflation adjusted IBM market cap. How would those numbers stack up?

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Re:Apple Is Not The Most Valuable Company In The History Of ... by aik on Tuesday August 21, 2012 @03:10AM (#4411508)

I think the main point is that any time value in a monetary unit is measured over time, it is naturally adjusted for inflation. This is done with basically everything. So it's not necessarily a "neener neener" situation, it's applying standard process.

I think the real question that is trying to be answered is which company is worth more, period. How do you measure worth? In dollars is one way, making use of the market cap. Which has/has made a larger (positive) impact in the world is another. Which metrics should you use to get to the answer is the question...

Adjusting for change of price in goods (your suggestion) is a little shaky of any idea in my mind, as 1. inflation affects all goods instead of a subset, which means there's more choice. 2. IBM must've had it harder since the cost was higher and they still managed such a large market cap, ie. took more value output to create the market cap.

Just some thoughts.

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Re:Apple Is Not The Most Valuable Company In The History Of ... by stock_toaster on Tuesday August 21, 2012 @01:20AM (#4411294)

"Apple's market capitalization is still well below Microsoft's 1999 record if inflation is taken into account. The $619 billion then becomes $846 billion."

-- http://finance.yahoo.com/news/apple-market-value-hits-600b-1...

note that was from april of this year.

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Re:Apple Is Not The Most Valuable Company In The History Of ... by code_duck on Tuesday August 21, 2012 @08:52AM (#4412440)

I think the East India Tea Company should factor into this discussion.

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