Which company is worth more? Dell or Apple?

The problem with your analysis is that Apple is one company - the "PC market" is dozens of companies, not just one. When you look at overall computer sales, Apple is in third place behind HP and Dell. When you throw tablets into the mix, Apple leads all competitors in mobile PC shipments.

So if you're comparing Windows to OSX, sure, Windows is much, much larger. But when you compare Apple against the other hardware manufacturers, suddenly they look like a pretty huge company. If we look at the two specifically mentioned in the thread title - Dell and Apple - Apple clearly dwarfs Dell, due to all the other stuff they do besides computers (iPods, iPhone, iTunes).

That was the big difference between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Gates decided a long time ago that his business model would be selling software. Jobs decided a long time ago that his business model would be selling the whole package - hardware and the software that runs on it. As a result, OSX is naturally more limited in distribution than Windows.

 

But these are market cap figures. In other words, the price of the stock multifplied by the number of shares outstanding. This number really represents what the buying public thinks a stock is worth - rather than how well the company is doing from a financial perspective.

It is certainly an indicator though. It's just based on people's perception rather than actual financial data.

-Brad

 

And yet... a company that isn't doing well financially isn't going to have a large market cap.

Apple's financials are all top-line, however. Revenue of $28.57 billion and profit of 7.31 billion for last quarter alone. Now, compare those results to Dell's $15.7 billion in revenue and $1.1 billion in profit.

Any way you slice it, Apple is doing much better than their competitors. How many companies can you find that are posting financial results as good as Apple's?

 

Apple=mainstream.

Hmmmmm.

Interesting.
Who is going to be Apples’ replacement as the "Computer Counterculture Company"?
I already own one outrageously expensive product that’s perpetuated on the cachet of its branding (my Harley), and so I’ll stick with PCs and Droids for the time being.
WADR to Jobs and his merry band.
I don’t have anything against i-thingys, I just haven’t had a good reason to buy any. I came close with some ipods, but they’re goofy about playing some library audio book formats---or at least they were the last time I looked at them. Soooooo.
No i-products for the kid (yet).

2007???
This must be “recycle old threads” day.