It’s official: Google has declared its intent to take part in next January’s auction of the 700 Mhz frequency spectrum. The company also plans to make a go of it alone and without a partner in mobile industry despite the $4.6 billion USD starting bid. Google will use the new spectrum for the recently introduced Android platform, which could make telephone calls and surfing free (well, almost free) with Google’s earnings coming from mobile services and sponsored links.

In my last posting, we looked at some calculations for the stock market equivalent of royalties that operators such as AT&T, Deutsche Telekom and O2 are required to pay Apple, and the result was a sum of $90 billion. Let me be the first to admit that this constitutes an exceedingly bold statement.

My estimate was based on set current values (P/E ratio and profits), assumptions (number of iPhone users) and unknowns (royalty regulations). Let’s begin by taking a look at the set values.

We’re living in a fast-paced world today. A good example of this is the pressure to publish quarterly figures – financial markets run from quarter to quarter and survive with healthy amount of guesswork about the future. Let’s take a minute to look back in time, though. On October 18, 2000, Apple released their Q4 figures totaling $1.87 billion in revenue (a 40% increase over Q4 1999), $108 million in earnings from continued business and 1.122 million Macs sold; respectable figures by any account.

In 1976, Apple was founded using seed capital from the sales of Steve Jobs’ VW bus and Steve Wozniak’s HP calculator. Four years later, on December 12, 1980, Apple burst onto the most influential of all financial markets, the NASDAQ, at the same breathtaking rate that the company continued to hold throughout the early years of its existence. The issue price for a share was $2.75 (split adjusted); since then, the rate has increased more than sixtyfold. If you’ve been along for the ride since the beginning, you can sit back and relax, but you’ve certainly developed nerves of steel along the way.
Apple’s gold rush-type mood reached its climax with the development of the Apple Lisa (1983) and the Macintosh (1984), the first computers to focus on the person instead of the machine. The graphical user interface was revolutionary, but not completely new: Xerox had developed the technology for their own computers, but hadn’t actively pursued it. Apple secured the rights and developed the first commercial operating system.

We know that guy – would he still make the same claim today?