Teeqoz said:
Microsoft is in businesses with way higher margin (software), while Sony is primarily in businesses with lower margins (hardware). Apple is basically the only hardware/electronics company that manages to maintain a very high operating margin. It also obviously doesn't help that a lot of Sony's divisions have performed weakly, but in general, software has higher operating margins than hardware. |
That's how one can easily see how overpriced Apple products are; look at their insane profit margins on hardware and it becomes clear that customers are paying a whole lot for brand and not really for components.
Anyway, MS has always been a software company first and foremost, and that yields significantly more profits on average, for obvious reasons. I still remember fondly when I had to explain to a member on this very site that the development cost of games is not tied to how many copies you printed (yes, he actually tried to argue that).
