Amazon, Google, Facebook and Apple were all on a race to be the first company in the world to have a market capitalization of $1 trillion. Well, a winner has emerged and it is not Amazon as touted by many but Apple.
Apple hit a $1 trillion market cap today, making the iPhone maker the first publicly traded U.S. company to reach the record valuation.
According to CNBC, Apple’s stock rose nearly 3 per cent following a strong third-quarter earnings report earlier this week, briefly hitting a session high of $207.05 in midday trading before falling back below $207.
Amazon had also been fast approaching the threshold, surpassing $900 billion in market value in July. Apple had quite the head start, though, hitting $900 billion back in November.
Apple wasn’t the first company to the $1 trillion market-cap mark. That was Chinese oil and gas giant PetroChina, which briefly topped $1 trillion in market value with its IPO in 2007 before the share price declined.
Variety reports that Apple generates billions from hardware sales: It had $29.9 billion in iPhone sales, up 20% year over year, for the June 30 quarter. On top of that, it has built a large and fast-growing business with the App Store, iTunes, Apple Music and other services, which pulled in $9.55 billion in sales in the most recent quarter.
