Microsoft Overtakes Apple As Most Valuable Company In The World
Image via The Art of Pics / Shutterstock.com
It looks like not even a US$19 Polishing Cloth can clean away investors’ slight uncertainty with Apple this season. With shares declining about 2%, the Cupertino tech giant has bowed out to Microsoft as the world’s most valuable public company.
It was CEO Tim Cook’s heads-up about oncoming supply chain hiccups that seems to have caused a wobble in trust. Apple has been dealing with such issues for a while, but Cook warned that they’ll likely be aggravated with the approaching holidays.
As a result, Apple’s sales fell US$6 billion in the fiscal fourth quarter, boosting Microsoft into first place in market capitalization, Reuters reports.
Despite a rocky year from the outside looking in, most notably regarding the public image of co-founder Bill Gates, Microsoft’s stock took a massive 49% hike this year. Its focus on cloud-based services proved to be a winning solution amid the pandemic, when remote work became the norm.
That’s not to say Apple has had a rough fiscal year. Despite the decline in Q4, it still saw an overall 13% growth in shares this year. Victoria Scholar, head of investment at Interactive Investor, deduced in a statement published by Insider that this downturn will only be short-term, likely persisting into the festive season, but it doesn’t indicate a lack of demand. Analysts agree that Apple has handled its supply chain problems well.
Meanwhile, Microsoft anticipates that it will remain resilient till the end of the calendar year, although this will come with its fair share of supply chain hurdles. Reuters notes that production blips will affect key products like the Xbox and Surface laptops.
Apple’s stock market value first superseded Microsoft’s in 2010 due to the growing hold of iPhones in the smartphone market. Since then,
Microsoft and Apple have tangoed as Wall Street’s most valuable companies.
Microsoft’s market cap finally surpassed Apple’s after the latter had maintained a streak since mid-2020. However, as the iPhone maker’s production issues appear to be temporary, Scholar forecasts that it is still on track to becoming the first business to attain a US$3 trillion valuation in a matter of a few years.
[via Reuters and Insider, cover image via The Art of Pics / Shutterstock.com]
Also check out these recent news
