Google parent Alphabet, Apple and Co. – pandemic enriches tech giants

The corona pandemic is helping the tech giants’ business to reach new heights. Apple, Google and Microsoft recorded combined profits of nearly $ 57 billion last year alone. This means that their business was consistently better than analysts had expected.

Change towards internet-based everyday life

The numbers demonstrate how the technology giants are flourishing in the pandemic as everyday life changes. More consumer and business activity is shifting to the internet – Google is benefiting from a boost in online advertising. In addition to the iPhone, Apple is selling more Mac computers and iPad tablets for working and studying from home. At Microsoft, the cloud boom is generating more business.

However, Apple and Google warned at the same time of risks to the economy from the more dangerous Delta virus variant – and the iPhone company is also gradually feeling the delivery bottlenecks in the electronics industry.

Apple makes 93 percent more profit than last year

In the past quarter, however, things went as well for Apple as it used to only be in the Christmas business. Revenue jumped 36 percent year over year to $ 81.4 billion. The bottom line was a profit of a good 21.7 billion dollars (18.4 billion euros) left – 93 percent more than a year earlier. For the current quarter, Apple again promised double-digit growth, but this will be weaker than recently due to the shortage of components, among other things.

In the past quarter, it was again the iPhone that provided the majority of the growth. Sales in the iPhone business rose by almost half to around 39.6 billion dollars, as Apple announced after the US market closed on Tuesday. Mac sales grew 16 percent to $ 8.2 billion, and the iPad business grew 12 percent to nearly $ 7.4 billion.

Delivery bottlenecks due to higher PC demand

For market observers, however, the focus was then on how well Apple can continue to fight the global supply bottlenecks, including for semiconductors. For the past quarter, Apple had already forecast three to four billion dollars lower revenues from scarce components for iPads and Macs. In the end, the burden was lower, said CFO Luca Maestri. In the current quarter, however, it will hit the iPhone and iPad – and the negative effect will be higher, he warned without precise figures. The bottlenecks were mainly triggered by the higher demand for PCs.

Alphabet is recording a sharp increase in advertising revenue

Google parent company Alphabet has reported a surge in its bottom line thanks to strong advertising revenue during the pandemic. The quarterly profit almost tripled compared to the previous year. The online giant reported a profit of 18.5 billion dollars, sales rose to 61.9 billion dollars in the same period. The video platform Youtube brought in seven billion dollars – after 3.8 billion dollars a year ago.

Google top manager Philipp Schindler said that retail advertising spending contributed most to the increase. In addition, the travel industry and financial service providers have also spent more money on advertisements. Alphabet’s shares rose more than four percent after the earnings numbers were released.

According to market analysts at eMarketer, Google is well on its way to totaling $ 130 billion in advertising revenue this year, an increase of about 25 percent year over year. The Californian tech giant would have a 28.6 percent share of the global digital advertising market, while Facebook is in second place with just under 24 percent, as the market researchers found.

Cloud-Boom bei Microsoft

At Microsoft, the revenues climbed in the three months to the end of June year-on-year by 21 percent to 46.2 billion dollars. The net profit even increased by 47 percent to 16.5 billion dollars. Microsoft could once again rely on its lucrative cloud services. The Azure platform, which offers numerous other companies and apps IT services and storage space on the network, increased sales by a surprisingly strong 51 percent. The PC division, which includes not only Windows software, but also hardware products such as the Xbox game console and “Surface” tablets, grew by 9 percent to $ 14.1 billion. Although the numbers were better than expected, the share initially reacted with significant price losses after the trading day.

You can see in the video: Whether smartphones, social networks or online job exchanges: Microsoft founder Bill Gates predicted technical achievements as early as 1999 that we take for granted today.