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JP Morgan’s hardware analyst Mark Moskowitz has laid bare exactly how huge Apple has become lately, calling the company an actual “sector,” not just a company any more. Of course, on paper, Apple is competing with other computer and device manufacturers like Dell and Samsung, but the numbers just don’t make that comparison meaningful any more, says Moskowitz. Apple’s stock is by far the largest single stock in the S&P 500 index, and when you compare the company’s income to other tech sectors like Pharmaceuticals and Software as a whole, Apple’s take actually lines up within the top 10.

I’ll say that again, because it’s important: Apple’s income and operations actually compete with whole industries, not just the rest of the PC market. This isn’t just the iPhone or the iPad being a new class of device, it’s Apple as a whole company creating a tech sector of its own. That’s pretty incredible, and if you haven’t yet realized how big Apple has gotten in the past few years (as if the $98 billion in cash wasn’t clear enough), maybe that’s your wakeup call.

Now, this may all seem like financial types just making much ado about numbers, but it actually holds quite a bit of meaning, both for Apple and its competitors going forward. Apple’s huge growth in the past few years will have lots of consequences, both for the company and the technology industry at large, and we still haven’t figured out just what a lot of those consequences will be.

JP Morgan: Apple is a sector unto itself originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 25 Feb 2012 19:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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So here is an interesting read for this weekend: It’s about Messages, how they’ve just made it across to the desktop (in beta form, sure, but coming soon in final version form), and how they sort of “compete” against FaceTime in Apple’s messaging domain. Writer Trevor Gilbert’s suggestion is that Apple should combine those two protocols into one messaging service, and then here’s the real kicker: Open them up, so that any platform, and essentially any app, could tag in and use those protocols. In that sense, they’d be very similar to ICQ or AIM, or any of the other chat services currently out there, except of course they’d be running on and licensed through Apple’s technology.

Gilbert makes a good case for consumers (and certainly, I’d appreciate using Messages and FaceTime with my friends and family who don’t happen to have Macs or iPhones). But I don’t think Apple’s that keen to open up the standard like this: as it is now, Messages and FaceTime are both selling points for Apple devices, and big ones at that. Yes, it would be easier for consumers to use Messages across platforms, but Apple would be opening up the door for other platforms to take advantage of its services, rather than doing what Tim Cook and everyone else in Cupertino has said they want to do all along: sell more and more devices.

Not to mention that Gilbert says the open message service would be “real-time, and free of charge.” Real time is right — Messages certainly works very well. But “free of charge” it is not for Apple at all, and opening up the service for almost anyone to use would definitely make it even more expensive than it already is. It’s certainly an interesting idea, and it would have some big ramifications for the messaging market, no question. But right now, I think Messages and FaceTime both are where Apple wants them: extra, selling point services for Apple devices only.

Thoughts on Messages, FaceTime and an open standard originally appeared on TUAW – The Unofficial Apple Weblog on Sat, 25 Feb 2012 16:30:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Who doesn’t love the Free and discounted apps? Here are today’s hot iOS apps deals that has gone free or on sale for a very limited time. Some of these apps are selling for significant less price and…

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