AP
One of the reasons this drives
"Significantly" might not be a strong enough word for the difference between the two companies' profits.
Bloomberg editor Mark Gimen points out that Apple earned $13.1 billion in profits last quarter. From the time Amazon turned a profit in 2003 to the end of 2011, Amazon has earned $5.1 billion in profits. (From inception, adding up losses, it's ~$1.5 billion, says analyst Benedict Evans.)
We want to say that again: Amazon's total profits are ~$5.1 billion. Apple did more than double that in the last three months.
(Amazon's price-earnings ratio is currently a mind-boggling 3,275x. Apple's is 10x. Traditional valuation metrics are obviously pointless for Amazon, but if you were to use Amazon's PE for Apple, the stock would be trading at $144,618 per share, for a market cap of $136 trillion. Those numbers are totally meaningless, but it's funny to think about.)
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Disclosure: Jeff Bezos is an investor in Business Insider through his personal investment company Bezos Expeditions.