Apple made history by becoming the first publicly traded firm to reach a $3 trillion market value by the end of a trading day. The computer giant has changed modern life with its array of money-making products.
Apple's stock price rose 2.3% on Friday, ending the day at $193.97 and giving the company a market cap of $3.04 trillion. The S&P 500 index rose by about 16 percent in the first half of the year, with contributions from a number of technology giants, including Apple, Microsoft, and chipmaker Nvidia.
On two separate days in January 2022, the 47-year-old business co-founded by Silicon Valley hero Steve Jobs temporarily surpassed a $3 trillion market value, but it was unable to maintain that valuation by market close. But this year, when the IT industry as a whole slowed and investors fretted over increasing interest rates, Apple's stock began a sustained decline that temporarily put its market value below $2 trillion.
Since the release of the high-priced Vision Pro headset earlier this month, which transports users into artificial settings known as virtual reality, Apple has not come close to the $3 trillion level again.The staggering size of a market cap of $3 trillion, even if the relevance is primarily symbolic, is impressive nonetheless.
If we use Zillow's data on the average sale price over the past year, we can see that $3 trillion would be enough to purchase over 9 million homes in the United States. It would be enough to acquire the top 50 sports franchises in the world and still have plenty of cash left over. If the United States' $3 trillion debt were eliminated and distributed equally, each citizen would earn nearly $9,000.
Microsoft's market cap of $2.5 trillion makes it the world's second-most valuable public firm. The market value of Saudi Arabia's oil giant, Aramco, is $2.08 trillion. The combined stock market values of Alphabet (Google's parent company), Amazon, and Nvidia all exceed $1 trillion.
In August 2021, just over two years after the Cupertino, California, corporation crossed $1 trillion for the first time, Apple's market value surpassed $2 trillion for the first time.Since Jobs' 1997 return to Apple after being ousted by then-CEO John Sculley in 1985, the business has developed a technological empire that has fueled a cascade of trillions. Apple was on the verge of insolvency when Jobs returned, and the company was so desperate for cash that it sought it from its longtime rival Microsoft.As of the end of the latest fiscal quarter, Apple had roughly $56 billion in cash on hand, despite paying out $105 billion annually in investor dividends and repurchasing its own stock.With his usual flair, Jobs announced the iPhone in 2007, and it continues to be Apple's most valuable product to this day. In 2017, the product was responsible for more than half of the firm's over $400 billion in revenue.
The Macintosh computer, iPad, Apple Watch, and AirPods, as well as Apple's services division, which includes things like music and video streaming, warranty programmes, fees collected through the iPhone app store, and advertising commissions that Google pays to be the default search engine on the iPhone, account for the rest of Apple's revenue.
Tim Cook, Apple's current CEO, succeeded Jobs as CEO just before Jobs' death in October 2011 and has since presided over the company's meteoric rise to wealth and prominence. When Jobs handed over leadership to Cook, Apple was worth $350 billion.
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