Apple Becomes First US Company to Reach $1 Trillion

Apple is quite some ways from completely controlling the world though, to become richer than any country it would have to surpass the GDP of the United States, which is now sitting at 19.4 trillion dollars.

The stock has risen about 9% since Tuesday when it reported better than expected results for the three months to June.

The company was founded by Steve Jobs, Steve Wozniak, and Ronald Wayne in April 1976, and went public in 1980. Its revenues today exceed the economic output of countries like Portugal and New Zealand.

The achievement seemed unimaginable in 1997 when Apple teetered on the edge of bankruptcy, with its stock trading for less than $1, on a split-adjusted basis., and its market value dropping below $2 billion.

Apple’s stock market value is greater than the combined capitalization of Exxon Mobil Corp XOM.N , Procter & Gamble Co PG.N and AT&T Inc T.N .

It may have been the vision of Steve Jobs that hurtled Apple towards this milestone, but it was the business acumen of Tim Cook that tipped them over.

The world’s most valuable company has also goosed its stock price through buybacks.

Indeed, as we pointed out yesterday, the company managed to grow its revenue by a whopping 17 percent year-over-year to a total of $53.3 billion in the third quarter of 2018.

Apple saw excellent numbers during its fiscal third quarter of the year, revealing strong worldwide sales and demand for the pricey iPhone X, which helped tip revenues to a new record despite a dip in device sales.

More recently, Apple has been in a race to $1 trillion with Seattle-based e-commerce giant Amazon, which is now valued around $879 billion. It’s just the number of shares multiplied by the share price.

“I left Apple twice”, Kawasaki said with more chuckle than notes of regret.

Since it was first released in 2007, the company has sold well over a billion iPhones while operating one of the largest app stores on the planet which has created around $100 billion in revenue for app developers all over the world. The shares are up around 22 per cent so far this year.