Five Tech Giants Just Keep Growing
May 01 2021 - 12:30AM
Dow Jones News
By The staff of The Wall Street Journal
If the pandemic had never happened, the tech industry's clout
likely would have risen over the past year. But the economic
effects of Covid-19 have catapulted the tech titans to heights few
might have imagined possible a year ago.
The past week of quarterly financial results from Apple Inc.,
Microsoft Corp., Amazon.com Inc., Facebook Inc., and Google-parent
Alphabet Inc. put that dominance on vivid display. Each of these
companies -- already juggernauts pre-pandemic -- recorded revenue
growth near or above its fastest pace in years.
The quintet set records for sales and profits. Revenue at Apple,
the world's most highly valued company, jumped 54% to the highest
level it's ever hit for the first three months of the year. Amazon
logged its fourth straight record quarterly profit -- a stretch
when its total earnings exceeded those of the previous three years
combined.
"Over a year into the pandemic, digital adoption curves aren't
slowing down. They're accelerating," said Satya Nadella, chief
executive of Microsoft, whose revenue rose 19% in the latest
quarter.
The stock market gives a glimpse of just how enormous these
companies have become in this extraordinary period: Combined market
value for the five Big Tech companies is now over $8 trillion,
accounting for nearly a quarter of the total value of the companies
in the S&P 500. That is nearly double the percentage five years
ago.
Here's a closer look at the big five, by the numbers:
Apple
From January to March, Apple sold $47 billion in iPhones. That
was a 66% jump from a year earlier, thanks to new models with
next-generation 5G technology. Consumers spent more on the premium
iPhones, too, with the average retail price in the U.S. up $52 from
a year earlier to $847, according to data from Consumer
Intelligence Research Partners LLC.
Microsoft
Microsoft's workplace-collaboration tool, Teams, now has 145
million daily active users.
That's almost double the year-ago figure, and up from around 20
million in November 2019. Mr. Nadella has said the pandemic
accelerated adoption of a range of digital tools, benefiting its
operations from business software to cloud-computing to
videogames.
Amazon
The e-commerce giant now has 950,000 U.S. employees, compared
with 500,000 about a year ago.
The company hired at a brisk pace to meet pandemic-induced
demand for essential goods and shorten delivery times. Amazon is
now the country's second-largest non-government employer after
Walmart Inc., and it said this past week it is hiring for tens of
thousands of positions across the country.
Alphabet
Advertising revenue grew 49% in the latest quarter at YouTube,
the video arm of Google.
YouTube became the nation's entertainment hub during a
stay-at-home year, attracting so many viewers that its ad sales hit
$6 billion in the quarter, just 16% less than Netflix Inc.
generated for the period. Google squeezed more money out of brands
with new ad formats that enable direct purchases within YouTube
during commercials.
Facebook
Facebook, Instagram, Messenger or WhatsApp were used at least
once by 3.45 billion people within the last month.
That's up nearly a sixth from the 2.99 billion figure a year
earlier. As people stuck at home lived more of their lives online
and sought out more information and interaction, the company's
seemingly ubiquitous reach grew even further.
(END) Dow Jones Newswires
May 01, 2021 00:15 ET (04:15 GMT)
Copyright (c) 2021 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
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