Microsoft has overtaken Apple as the world’s most valuable company,with the Redmond based tech giant take over the number one spot, Apple who are based in Cupertino, California are now the second most valuable in the world, followed by Saudi oil giant Aramco.
Microsoft now sits at a market value of $2.46 trillion, while Apple stands at $2.43 trillion. Apple’s drop in market value follows what Wall Street analysts and experts call disappointing quarterly earnings results yesterday. This Despite solid growth in product categories.
At Friday’s market close, Microsoft’s market cap was almost $2.49 trillion while Apple’s was about $2.46 trillion, according to CNBC. This isn’t the first time Microsoft has passed Apple; the Windows-maker surpassed Apple’s market cap in 2018 for the first time since 2010 and once again in July 2020. (Alphabet has also taken the crown from Apple, surpassing Apple’s market cap in 2016.)
But Apple has been a leader in the markets for some time. By being the first US company to hit a $1 trillion market cap in 2018. The just two years later, becoming the first US company to hit a $2 trillion market cap. (The iPhone is still a massively successful product, after all.) So it’s not out of the realm of possibility that Apple retakes the title of the world’s most valuable company sometime soon.
Apple took a $6 billion hit to its sales during the fiscal fourth quarter due to persistent global supply chain problems, leading to a miss on Wall Street expectations. Top boss Tim Cook said the impact will be even worse in the current holiday sales quarter.
“Compared to less hardware focused FAANG. ( These are the five most popular and best-performing American technology companies: Meta (formerly known as Facebook), Amazon, Apple, Netflix, and Alphabet (formerly known as Google.) .Apple is also a lot more exposed to supply chain disruption,” said Sophie Lund-Yates, equity analyst at Hargreaves Lansdown.