Mobile Computing News

Photo: Apple

The much-prized Apple stock wins an important victory today. By market cap, Apple is now the biggest technology company in the world, surpassing Microsoft’s stock market value.

$50 billion back in March

Market cap, which is the value of a company derived by multiplying all outstanding shares with that company’s share price, gives an indication of how much investors think an organisation is worth. As such, it isn’t necessarily indicative that Apple is performing financially better than Microsoft is, but it is indicative of the sentiment held for the two companies.

Growth curves

As recent as March, Microsoft’s market cap was $50 billion (about £32.5 billion) more than Apple’s, showing the unrelenting growth the company has experienced in recent months. To put this further into perspective, Microsoft has grown a mere 4 per cent in market cap in the last five years with Apple growing nearly 600 per cent in the same period.

Competitive areas

Photo: Microsoft

Another key contributor to the Apple stock collective value surpassing Microsoft’s market cap is the two companies’ respective product categories and expected future performance. Apple’s Mac line and iPhone products are growing rapidly, with the now-declining iPod still contributing to the company’s bottom line. Even the newcomer, the iPad, is doing unbelievable numbers for the company considering it is (or is that now was?) an unproven market category.

Microsoft, on the other hand, has historically been strong on two fronts: Windows and Office. Windows 7 has performed very well, and is the fastest selling operating system in history. Office 2010 has finally seen release and is expected to perform well but not as well as previous versions of the productivity tool, thanks in no small part to web-based (and often free) alternatives like Google Docs.

History in the making

Much will be made of Steve Jobs carrying Cupertino and Apple stock to this summit, considering that a little over a decade ago the company was on the verge of collapse, with some calling for the whole operation to be shut down.

At the close of trading, Apple stock was collectively valued at $222 billion, while Microsoft’s market cap sat at $219 billion.