Apple reaches new landmark with $1 trillion valuation

NEW YORK (AFP) - Apple -- the culture-changing company behind the iPod, iPhone and iPad -hit another milestone on Thursday, becoming the first private- sector company to surpass $1 trillion in market value.

Shares of Apple finished the formal Wall Street trading day at $207.39, topping the magic number two days after the California tech giant reported strong quarterly earnings.

The landmark is the latest victory for Tim Cook, who faced skepticism when he took over as chief executive in 2011 from ailing iconic co-founder Steve Jobs.

Jobs, who founded Apple in a Silicon Valley garage in 1976 with Steve Wozniak and built it into a global powerhouse, died in October 2011.

After his death, analysts and other industry watchers wondered whether the company would lose its ability to wow the world with “the next big thing.” But Cook has gradually won accolades from investors by pumping out a series of solid financial results and spreading Apple's products to China and other foreign markets.

Apple is the first private sector company to reach this level. State oil company PetroChina briefly broke the $1 trillion barrier in 2007 during its initial public offering, but has since dropped back down.

“Of course I'm proud of Apple, but I don't measure the world by human simplifications like round numbers,” co-founder Wozniak was quoted as telling Yahoo Finance.

US tech companies have cemented their position in the broader market, now making up the top five most valuable enterprises based on share prices.

Behind Apple are Amazon, Google parent Alphabet, Microsoft and Facebook.

A trillion dollars is roughly the annual gross domestic product of Indonesia, and more than twice that of Belgium, according to World Bank data from 2016.