Great potential for emerging markets in the cloud: Apple, Microsoft, MiMedia

Apple shifts focus despite cloud billions

In the second quarter of 2025, Apple impressively demonstrated that its strategic focus on services is extremely successful. The Company generated quarterly revenue of USD 95.4 billion, representing a 5% increase over the previous year. Particularly noteworthy is the performance of the services segment, which set a new quarterly record of USD 26.65 billion and grew by 11.8%. This business segment now accounts for almost 28% of total revenue and demonstrates the successful diversification away from pure hardware dependency.

The market is pleased with this development – why? While hardware is expensive to develop and the hardware business is increasingly suffering from the trade war, digital services and subscriptions are a highly predictable and, above all, recurring business. To be less vulnerable to tariffs, Apple plans to reduce its dependence on Chinese factories by 10% by the end of 2025 and instead invest USD 19 billion in the US. This should enable the Company to remain on its growth path in the long term.

Microsoft: AI also boosting revenue in traditional cloud business

Microsoft continues to deliver consistent growth. The figures for the third quarter of the current fiscal year were strong, thanks in part to its cloud business: Revenue climbed 13% to USD 70.1 billion, and earnings per share came in at USD 3.46, significantly beating analysts' expectations. Growth was particularly strong for the Azure cloud service, which grew by 35%. Only 16 percentage points of that were attributable to AI-related business. Although Microsoft CFO Amy Hood emphasized that this distinction is becoming increasingly difficult to make, the traditional cloud business remains robust and is also increasingly integrated with AI solutions, so that both areas are growing in parallel.**

MiMedia rolls out cloud services across emerging markets

While major tech companies like Apple and Microsoft are still heavily dependent on hardware sales or their dominant market position, the Canadian company MiMedia Holdings is taking a different approach and offering its cloud services as white-label solutions. Instead of competing for users, it focuses on retail chains and manufacturers, enabling them to equip their goods with modern cloud solutions. These partners pre-install the MiMedia app as the default gallery on devices, thereby reaching a broad user base without traditional marketing costs. MiMedia focuses in particular on emerging markets in Latin America, where it already reaches millions of users. Existing strategic partnerships - such as with Walmart and its brand "Bait" - demonstrate the potential of the business model. According to the Company, there is potential to reach up to 50 million customers annually, which opens up significant scaling opportunities.

MiMedia's model also offers great opportunities in Asia and other emerging regions: the devices offered by major providers are too expensive for large segments of the population, and there are many alternative smartphone manufacturers who, by partnering with MiMedia, can rely on a mature product that even complies with the German GDPR. This ensures low costs and smooth integration for manufacturers. For MiMedia, this kind of growth brings customers, economies of scale, and valuable data.

Mini valuation instead of AI hype: MiMedia shares on the verge of a breakthrough?

While analysts at Apple and Microsoft have long recognized the potential of the cloud business, MiMedia is focusing 100% on this growth area, but remains largely unnoticed. This focus is being celebrated on the stock market, with MiMedia's share price rising by a whopping 149% over the past six months. Apple has seen a 23.4% loss in the same period, while Microsoft is down 2.8%. However, while the big tech stocks were previously hyped by the market and AI fantasies in particular led to excessive share prices, the hype has not caught on at MiMedia despite the impressive returns: MiMedia's market capitalization is still around EUR 22 million.** After trading mostly sideways in recent months, MiMedia's stock should now be of particular interest to speculative investors.