Everyone knows the tech industry is rich, but it can be challenging to get your head around just how much money it’s minting.<\/p>\n
Four of the industry’s giants — Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Google parent Alphabet — reported unexpectedly large profits this week. (Amazon’s profit more than doubled Thursday.) A fifth, Apple, releases earnings on Tuesday. These companies are the largest on Earth, at least in terms of their market value.<\/p>\n
But their raw financial figures only tell you so much. Here are seven facts you might not know about the lucre the technology industry is rolling in.<\/p>\n
——<\/p>\n
The five largest tech companies are collectively worth more than the entire economy of the United Kingdom. Investors value these companies at $3.5 trillion; the gross domestic product of the U.K. was $2.6 trillion in 2017, according to the International Monetary Fund . Only four national economies are larger than the combined tech giants: those of the U.S., China, Japan and Germany.<\/p>\n
The same five tech companies are worth more than the next 11 most valuable U.S. corporations, a list that includes JPMorgan Chase, Johnson & Johnson and Walmart.<\/p>\n
——<\/p>\n
Apple makes roughly as much money every day as 2500 average U.S. households can expect to see in a year. That’s $151 million, a figure calculated from the company’s expected profit in the January-March quarter and the median household income of $57,230 reported by the Census Bureau .<\/p>\n
For a more prosaic comparison, Apple makes almost three times what ExxonMobil does; the oil giant had an average daily profit of $54 million last year.<\/p>\n
——<\/p>\n
While you were looking at baby pictures or stalking your ex yesterday, Facebook made $1.6 million. The average user spends 42 minutes a day on the service, according to eMarketer estimates. Facebook’s profits were almost $5 billion in the first quarter — $56 million a day, $2.3 million an hour, $39,000 a minute.<\/p>\n
——<\/p>\n
The two big tech companies you almost never pay directly — Google and Facebook — can afford to offer you free services thanks to their hammerlock on digital advertising. The two will sell an estimated $61 billion in U.S. online ads this year, according to the research firm eMarketer.<\/p>\n
That’s more than a quarter of expected U.S. spending on all forms of advertising ($221 billion). All of it is in the hands of just two companies.<\/p>\n
——<\/p>\n
Mark Zuckerberg made $6.6 billion on Thursday, the day after Facebook reported earnings. The company’s stock jumped 9 per cent on the news; the Facebook co-founder owned 457.1 million shares as of Dec. 31.<\/p>\n
Of course, that cuts both ways. When Facebook’s stock slid 8 per cent in a day after the Cambridge Analytica privacy scandal broke, Zuckerberg lost more than $6 billion.<\/p>\n
——<\/p>\n
With a single move, Amazon could create $2 billion out of thin air. The company just said it will raise the annual price of its Prime membership program to $119 from $99. Given that there are now over 100 million Prime members — and assuming they don’t flee– that’s a good chunk of change for sliding a few digits around.<\/p>\n
——<\/p>\n
If you’d put $10,000 into Apple stock in September 1997 when co-founder Steve Jobs came back as CEO, your stake would be worth $2.1 million today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Everyone knows the tech industry is rich, but it can be challenging to get your head around just how much money it’s minting. Four of the industry’s giants — Facebook, Microsoft, Amazon and Google parent Alphabet — reported unexpectedly large profits this week. (Amazon’s profit more than doubled Thursday.) A fifth, Apple, releases earnings on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":578,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[],"tags":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7503"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/578"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7503"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7503\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7504,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7503\/revisions\/7504"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7503"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7503"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.lifeinsurance-orleans.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7503"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}