Of course it would be Apple
The iphone maker has defined this mobile internet age we live in and was always on track to be the first $1 trillion company
It was inevitable that Apple would become the most valuable listed company ever: it is the first to reach the magical $1 trillion valuation figure. It is Apple — with its stylish minimalist design and musthave gadgets — that has come to define the mobile internet age and has had a stratospheric share price despite a number of scandals.
Apple dropped the word “computer” from its title years ago, and it now derives two-thirds of profits from the iphone, which turned 10 last year and celebrated this by dropping the single home button that had come to epitomise the simplicity of the iphone interface. It was fitting that the news that pushed Apple’s valuation into 13 figures last week was that iphone sales were stronger than expected.
For months there had been speculation about whether it would be Apple or Amazon that would be the first listed company to break through the $1 trillion threshold — with Google’s holding company Alphabet seeming to threaten a run at the title.
But it’s appropriate that it’s Apple, which is an integral part of the two silicon chip revolutions that got us here: personal computers (especially the Macintosh) and smartphones (the iphone in 2007).
It’s all the more noteworthy because when Steve Jobs returned to the company in 1997 Apple was nearly bankrupt and was bereft of ideas, inspiration or any cool tech.
Jobs relaunched the iconic all-inone Macintosh as the imac, brought portable music to our pockets through the ipod and itunes store, while upending Big Music, and made a truly iconic pivot into mobile phones.
The then large touchscreen-supersized phones turned cellphones from tiny keypad midgets to mini computers that had the wonderful ability to surf the web. Despite earlier attempts at making the web mobile, the iphone led that charge. Other manufacturers followed, especially when Google released Android. We saw phones morph from voice-centric devices we held next to our heads into data-centric tablets we held in our hands.
Apple overtook Exxonmobil as the most valuable listed company in August 2011 and then again, on a sustained basis, from January 2012, when its market cap reached $414.83bn.
Interestingly, Microsoft — the other major firm from the fertile 1960s and 1970s that led to the rise of Silicon Valley — was the first US company to hit $500bn, which it did in 1999.
The US stock markets are no longer dominated by Big Steel, Big Oil or Walmart, but by tech firms. It’s noteworthy that Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google — the socalled Faangs — have a market value equivalent to 19% of US GDP. It’s the ongoing confirmation of how digital has become the centre of our lives that these tech behemoths are the most valuable — and dangerously most powerful — firms in the world.
Apple, the great Jobs-led innovation company that has played such a pivotal role in our computer and mobile worlds, deserves the honour.
Facebook, Apple, Amazon, Netflix and Google have a market value equivalent to 19% of US GDP