Originally posted by: Idontcare
Originally posted by: Stiganator
I have a theory that most companies suck because they are publicly owned. They "owe" it to the investors to make money. So, they will always gouge you just as much as you will tolerate. Where as a private company can just offer it at this price and people will be pumped, we don't make quite as much, but more people bought it and their lives are somehow improved my this.
Is it just really difficult for private companies to make it big? Why don't companies realize that if they acted like nice people, people would treat them like nice people. Instead, you all we have is hostility towards big companies.
I think what you are trying to communicate is that publicly owned companies really only have one product they sell and that is their ticker symbol.
Intel really only sells INTC. Intel's decision makers, executive management, focus solely on doing whatever it takes to make the customer (the stock holder) value their product (the ticker symbol INTC) more today than they valued it yesterday.
If that means selling quad-core chips to drive ASP's to $X then that is what they will do so long as it makes the true product of the company, INTC, more valuable. If that means announcing layoffs to bolster consumer (stock buyer) perception that INTC will increase tomorrow under the steady hand of today's management then there will be layoffs.
It has nothing to do with profit, nothing to do with sales, nothing to do with people or products, it has everything to do with the ticker symbol (the ONLY product of the company) and the value of that product on wall-street.
Many people think they are the customer of Intel because they buy an Intel processor. You are not a customer. That is why when you call customer support you get to talk to a machine or someone in India. The customer is the shareholder, the stock holder. Do you think mutual fund managers call Intel and get greeted by the service dept in India?
This is the fundamentals of the internet stocks fueling the bubble of 2000 - profit was not an objective, selling a consumer product was not necessary for your ticker symbol to increase in value.
This is not the case with privately held companies. Privately held companies solely exist for making money. They do not exist to increase sales, market share, ticker symbols, etc. They live and die by their bottom-line, and thus their focus is naturally on ensuring people are buying their products so the cash-flow stays positive.