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| DATE | 2021-05-01 |
| FROM | Ruben Safir
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| SUBJECT | Subject: [Hangout - NYLXS] COVID-19,
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wsj.com
Five Tech Giants Just Keep Growing
The staff of The Wall Street Journal
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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., AAPL
-1.51% Microsoft Corp. MSFT -0.13% , Amazon.com Inc., AMZN -0.11%
Facebook Inc., FB -1.34% 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.
Appeared in the May 1, 2021, print edition as 'In Tech, There’s
Regular-Big And There’s Pandemic-Big.'
--
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