Apple must be doing a lot of things right lately. Their stock has increased by 1384% in the last five years. Microsoft’s stock, on the other hand, has decreased by 2.45%.
You can see Apple’s stock growth in red below, and Microsoft’s in blue. (From Google Finance.)
Of course, these are percentage increases and are therefore relative to the starting points they had. Still, there is no denying that Microsoft’s stock is basically worth the same now as it was five years ago, while Apple’s is worth almost 14 times as much as it was. That’s a major increase in just five years!
Why the huge difference? Microsoft has been stumbling with a lot of their products (Windows Vista, Zune, etc), while Apple has kept putting some very successful products on the market (for example various iterations of iPod, iMacs, and now iPhone). At least that’s our guess, though we aren’t financial analysts.
Speculation aside, people who bought Apple stock five years ago definitely made a great investment. As an example, stock worth $1,000 then would now be worth $13,840. Hey, that’s just about enough to buy an iPhone! 😉
