Steve Ballmer: Planetary King Of Info Tech Profit

I like Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer's dismissal in the Wall Street Journal of all the frothy media churn over Apple surpassing Microsoft in market cap: "I will make more profits and certainly there is no technology company in the planet which is as profitable as we are." Next question, please?From the Journals news article about Ballmer's deflection of questions about market-cap superiority at a media event in New Delhi:

Many journalists crave controversy, even when they have to manufacture it themselves by bending reality to fit the template they believe will titillate audiences. In this case, rather than assessing the extraordinary gains Apple has made in the past few years with the iPhone, the iPad, and iTunes and give credit to Steve Jobs and company for their achievements, the knee-jerk reaction among many journalists is to go on the attack against the former top dog in market cap, Microsoft.

To be sure, Ballmer and Microsoft have made some significant missteps during these few years of Apple's remarkable ascendancy, but in the past several months Microsoft and Ballmer have also done many things right for both the short term and the long term. And lest we forget, while Apple is a hugely profitable company, Microsoft-true to Ballmer's claim of planetary supremacy in profits-outperforms Apple in profits by a huge margin. From the Journal article:

In that context, I also like the brief perspective Ballmer offered on share prices at the end of his comment about Microsoft's unmatched profitability: "Stock markets will take care of themselves."