I see Cisco with a few years of 15% net income profit margin from 1998 to 2000 (they do not have any reports before that on their website). And Ericcson is in the single digit ranges around 7%. Cisco actually got more profitable and since at least 2006 has been in the 20% range.
Apple has been in 20%+ range for over a decade, Alphabet in the 25% range, Microsoft is hitting 30% regularly, and Facebook is at nearly 40% for the last 5 years.
For Amazon, I can only assume investors are factoring in huge profit margins for AWS since it seems to be singlehandedly marching Amazon’s profit margins from near 0% to 6% in the last 6 or 7 years.
Feels like a different level of profit than in previous decades.