The average tech company profits $182 per second but household names like HP, Adobe, and eBay were each below that. Check out the chart for profit per second of more tech and Big Tech companies.

Unless the NSN division can start generating more profit, or the Location & Services division has struck a hard bargain with Microsoft over its maps licensing, the company will not be profitable.

Still, I don't consider Apple bigger profits ($5.9 billion versus Microsoft's $5.2 billion) a triumph of hardware over software. Hardware remains a dog-eat-dog business. That's why HP and Dell are ...