Apple’s iPhone business is worth more than all of Microsoft

In line with today’s news that Apple has surpassed Microsoft’s record for largest market cap, we’ve found another interesting stat involving the two companies that you might find interesting.

In looking at recent sales numbers, Apple’s iPhone business alone is now worth more than all of Microsoft’s products — that’s Windows, Office, Xbox, you name it — put together…

Vanity Fair reports:

“One Apple product, something that didn’t exist five years ago, has higher sales than everything Microsoft has to offer. More than Windows, Office, Xbox, Bing, Windows phone, and every other product that Microsoft has created since 1975. In the quarter ended March 31, 2012, iPhone had sales of $22.7 billion; Microsoft Corporation, $17.4 billion.”

Of course, as Forbes is quick to point out, the term “worth” is used extremely lightly here. We don’t know, for example, what Apple actually makes on the iPhone alone, compared to Microsoft’s profits. And if we tried to measure worth in terms of stock or patent value, we’d be doing the math for days.

But just looking at the raw numbers, the amount of money generated on iPhone sales is more than the amount of sales generated by all of Microsoft. And that, in and of itself, is mind-blowing.

A cell phone turning more revenue than all of Microsoft’s software, who would’ve thought?