Apple became the first U.S. company to surpass $1 trillion in market valuation today when its stock price reached $207.05. It retained the label by closing slightly above that mark at $207.39. The stock price had receded from the trillion-dollar value before closing above it.
Although the company started out selling personal computers, that aspect of its business is now dwarfed by other offerings. The Cupertino-based company sold 223 million iPhones last year earning its smartphone the title of top-selling tech product of the year. Samsung’s smartphones came in second at 33 million combined units sold of its Galaxy S8 and Note 8 phones.
Although hardware has been largely responsible for the company’s explosive growth in value over the last ten years, the tech giant is now focusing heavily on software and services – categories that include iTunes, the App Store and Apple Pay. Combined, those segments account for over $9 billion in revenue for Apple, per quarter. And that number is growing.
Apple is not the world’s first company to reach a $1 trillion valuation. That honor belongs to PetroChina, a publicly traded firm owned by the China National Petroleum Corp., a state-owned oil company. PetroChina reached the trillion-dollar mark in 2007 before its stock value collapsed when oil prices tanked.
Nor is Apple the world’s most valuable company. That title likely belongs to Saudi Arabia’s Aramco oil company. It’s IPO, likely coming within the next year, is estimated to put that company’s value at over $2 trillion.
But Apple is the first U.S.-based company to reach the milestone, and the first company to do so in an industry other than oil and gas. Apple first surpassed ExxonMobil in 2011, at the time the largest U.S. company in terms of market capitalization. Today Exxon’s value is around $330 billion, about one-third that of Apple’s.
Photo by Apple Inc.