The big four: Microsoft still has the highest operating margins

We are used to thinking that Apple rakes in all the profits in mobile (and that’s true), but what if we looked at the overall picture of company margins and compare the big four: Microsoft, Apple, Google and Samsung? An interesting graph shows how operating margins were almost never highest at Apple, it was Microsoft on the whole that scores the highest.

True, Microsoft is on the decline, but it still has Office that is the perfect margin booster.

You’d also notice two other facts - Apple seems to has gone past its peak, and Google seems to be on the downslide recently.

It’s hard to conclude those are trends, though. Apple has always kept a low-profile and its unveilings of products that were previously secret can swing it back to fast growth rapidly.

For Google, it seems that the Motorola acquisition is draggin the company’s operating margins down and that’s not a surprise. The company Google spent $12.5 billion on has to be transformed and Larry Page recently said he was happy with the direction Motorola is going to after the Moto X release.

Finally, Samsung’s large business comprising of not just mobile, but everything is obviously not competitive with the operating margins of the other three. But then again, you can’t make much money on fridges and TVs, can you?


source: @asymco