Apple’s already the most valuable company in tech, but are they on target to become the biggest company in tech as well? According to analyst George Colony, who founded the Forrester Research group, they’re on track: they’ll outgrow both IBM and HP in the next two years.
“They’ll be bigger than IBM next year, and they’ll be bigger than HP the year after that,” Colony said, citing Apple’s 52 percent sales growth last year.
If they keep up they’re current growth rates, they’ll soon be a $200 billion revenue company. That’s a lot headier a number than HP’s sales of $126 billion last year, or IBM’s sales of $99.9 billion last year, which makes them the largest tech companies by sales.
In 2010, Apple became the biggest tech company when it comes to market capitalization. It looks like by 2012, the sales will follow suit.
John Brownlee is a writer for Fast Company, and a contributing writer here at CoM. He has also written for Wired, Playboy, Boing Boing, Popular Mechanics, VentureBeat, and Gizmodo. He lives in Boston with his wife and two parakeets. You can follow him here on Twitter.
4 responses to “Analyst Predicts Apple Will Soon Be Bigger In Sales Than IBM and HP”
Statements such as these are what I don’t understand about analysts. Supposedly they work with the same numbers and such and yet this analyst pulls these revenue numbers up like it’s the most natural thing in the world. I’m not sure how he arrived at them. Yet other analysts working with the same numbers view Apple as an overpriced stock that is going nowhere because they believe that Apple can’t possibly step up sales for their products even though Apple doesn’t have that much overall market share.
There seems to be a huge gap in analysts opinions of Apple seemingly because some believe Apple can keep producing products that are in high demand and others believe Apple cannot keep producing products that are in high demand. Apple’s current share price seems to be based on hit products two years from now and that makes no sense to me. How can anyone know what Apple will be doing two years from now or consumer demand for Apple products?
Right now, despite lofty target prices for Apple, the shares have been completely flat for a couple of months, so it doesn’t seem as though investors are exactly lining up to get in on Apple’s huge revenue boost. Over the last few months, Apple has been slightly behind IBM in share price percentage so investors certainly haven’t caught on to Apple’s seemingly well-hidden potential.
You wrote, “I’m not sure how he arrived at them.”
Uhm, the article stated, “Colony said, citing Apple’s 52 percent sales growth last year. If they keep up they’re current growth rates, they’ll soon be a $200 billion revenue company.”
It’s pretty clear, he based his prediction on current growth rates of 52%.
Then, you wrote, “Yet other analysts working with the same numbers view Apple as an overpriced stock that is going nowhere”
Who are you talking about? Which analysts? There are 54 analysts who cover Apple, and my understanding is that 50 have Buy recommendations, so who are these “other analysts” saying Apple is an “overpriced stock”? Are you just making up a strawman argument?
As for the meandering price action, it hasn’t been “completely flat” for a couple of months. It’s bounced around, after hitting its all-time high of $364.90 mid-February. Stocks don’t just go in one-direction all the time, and certainly not over a short period of time.