Apple shatters $1 Trillion Market Cap

COLOMBO (News 1st) - Apple Inc.'s market value reached $1 trillion and shares closed at a new record high of $207.39 in New York on Thursday (02 August). Shares of the company rose from $5.89, or 2.9%, to $207.39, making it worth slightly more than $1 trillion. Apple first reached the milestone when it climbed above $207.04 in midday trading. The stock has risen 23% so far this year, as it reported strong revenue and profit gains Tuesday (31 July) as demand for high-price iPhone's remained resilient and sales from the app store and other services hit all-time highs. Apple beat Silicon Valley rivals such as Amazon and Microsoft to become the first to hit the $1 trillion valuation. The five most valuable companies - Apple, Amazon.com Inc., Google parent Alphabet Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Facebook Inc.--are all tech and internet firms, a level of industry dominance rare in recent markets history. Those five collectively accounted for nearly 15% of the total value of the S&P 500 as of last month, according to Ned Davis Research. Since the iPhone first went on sale in 2007, Apple shares have soared by 1,100% and have jumped almost a third in the past year. The rise is even more astonishing - 50,000% - since the company first listed in 1980 and this dwarfs the 2,000% increase for the S&P 500 index over the same period. Apple traces its origins to the garage of co-founder Steve Jobs in 1976 and was initially best known for its Mac personal computers before its smartphone paved the way for the app economy. Apple’s climb is noteworthy since its survival as a company was in doubt just over two decades ago. It lost $2 billion over two years in the mid-1990s, weighed a sale to Sun Microsystems, and grappled it's way through three CEOs in four years before bringing back Mr Jobs. He revived the business by thinning Apple’s product lineup and spearheading a trio of hits: the iPod, iPhone and iPad. Apple Inc. has diversified the sources of its profits. It now makes about $10bn every three months from services such as selling apps, cloud storage and music streaming. It may have been the vision of Steve Jobs that drove Apple towards this milestone, but it was the business acumen of Tim Cook that gave them the edge. The iPhone X, which launched last November (2017), has delivered minimal unit growth, but its $999 price tag has lifted total sales by raising average iPhone selling prices 15% higher to $750 in the nine months ended in June.