Apple: most valuable US company

Shortly before 2pm today Apple surpassed ExxonMobil in market capitalization to become the most valuable company in the United States.

Apple Inc.’s stock gained 3.4 percent to $365.10 Tuesday afternoon, bringing the iPhone and iPad maker’s market capitalization to about $338 billion.

Exxon Mobil Corp. shares, meanwhile, were trading at $69.23, down 1.4 percent. That gives the oil company a market cap of $337 billion.

Other big-name corporations, such as Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and General Electric Co., don’t even come close.

[...]

In its latest quarterly report, Apple said stronger iPhone and iPad sales helped more than double its net income to $7.31 billion and grow revenue by 82 percent to $28.6 billion.

This is a phenomenal level of performance in a little over a decade. In 1997 Apple was nearly bankrupt when Steve Jobs returned to the company as ‘interim’ CEO as part of the NeXT acquisition. Ten years later Apple revolutionized the mobile industry with the iPhone, and followed that up three years later with the creation of a totally new product category with the iPad. Not to mention the first widely-adopted online digital media store—the iTunes Store—that surpassed 10 billion downloads in 2010.

Steve Jobs’ annual salary at Apple: $1.

Posted: August 9th, 2011
Filed under: Apple, Competition, Finance, Innovation Tags: exxon, ipad, iphone, next, steve jobs | No Comments »

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