IBM Overtakes Microsoft's Market Cap

International Business Machines Corp. IBM In 2011, IBM surpassed Microsoft's market value by $1 billion. During the past fiscal year, INTL BUSINESS MACHINES CORP increased its bottom line by earning $14.41 versus $13.12 in the prior year. This year, the market expects an improvement in earnings ($16.91 versus $14.41).

Despite the weak revenue results, IBM has outperformed against the industry average of 14.4%. Since the same quarter one year prior, revenues slightly dropped by 3.3%. Weakness in the company's revenue seems to have hurt the bottom line, decreasing earnings per share. 48.28% is the gross profit margin for INTL BUSINESS MACHINES CORP which we consider to be strong. Regardless of IBM's high profit margin, it has managed to decrease from the same period last year. Despite the mixed results of the gross profit margin, the net profit margin of 12.94% trails the industry average.

Microsoft Corporation MSFT Microsoft ended the day down by 14 cents a share to close at $28.79 April 11. The disappointing PC sales indicated weak demand for its Windows 8 operating system that just hit the market over the fall. The stock traded down 4.4% to close at $28.93. IDC reported that PC sales slid nearly 14% in the first quarter.

The company has revenues is of $21.46 billion in the second quarter of fiscal 2013. Microsoft has been a large competitor to Oracle. Microsoft’s growth strategy is to leverage big data technologies from the desktop to the cloud. The company also has expectations for democratization using big data.

In the last few years, Microsoft has revamped its analytics, embraced big data and Hadoop. Microsoft's current investments are supported by its strong balance sheet improving market share gains. Microsoft does have emerging markets strength, continued technology deployment at data centers and growth in cloud computing.