Apple became the first company to ever reach a $1 trillion market cap on Wednesday as its share price soared to $207.39. But according to CEO Tim Cook, this is “not the most important measure of our success.”
In an email to Apple employees, Cook says that financial returns are simply the result of innovation — and that it’s the team behind them that really makes Apple so spectacular.
Competition is heating up between Amazon and Apple, regarding which will pass the trillion dollar valuation mark first. But despite Apple still being ahead to the tune of approximately $949 billion to Amazon’s $888 billion, investors seem to believe that Jeff Bezos’ retail giant will be the one to set the record.
According to a recent survey at the 8th Annual Delivering Alpha Conference in New York, CNBC asked 100 investors which company they thought would set this record first. Amazingly, a whole 70 percent said that Amazon is likely to pip Apple to the post.
Apple became the first $800 billion company in history this week, as stock rose to a record high yesterday.
In midday trading yesterday, Apple shares rose to $153.70 per share on the Nasdaq. With 5.21 billion shares outstanding, that briefly gave Apple an historic market cap of $801.37 billion.
Apple maintains its position as the world’s most valuable brand for the third year in a row, according to this year’s Brand Finance Global 500 study.
After Apple, the other positions in the Top 10 were filled out by Samsung, Google, Microsoft, Verizon, General Electric, AT&T, Amazon, Walmart, and IBM.
“What sets [Apple] apart is its ability to monetize [its] brand,” Brand Finance CEO David Haigh said in a statement. “For example, though tablets were in use before the iPad, it was the application of the Apple brand to the concept that captured the public imagination and allowed it to take off as a commercial reality.”
Closing its fourth round of funding, the mobile credit card processing company just raised $200 million, making it worth a staggeringly large $3.25 billion. The company, built by Jack Dorsey of Twitter fame, allows anyone with an iPhone, iPad, or other compatible mobile device, to accept credit cards. Square is widely seen as the industry leader in the mobile payment-with-a-dongle space (I just made that term up), as evidenced by other dongles released shortly thereafter by the likes of PayPal and Intuit, among others.
In what may come as no surprise, the COO of Square, Keith Rabois, is on record at All Things D, saying that the transition from current registers and point of sale devices (like ATM card-swiping devices) to iPads or other tablets will happen within the next year and a half. Square’s partnership with Starbucks is only the first of the steps being taken actively by Square to make this a self-fulfilling prophecy.
