Apple Hits $1 Trillion

To say last Thursday was a good day for Apple Inc. may be the understatement of the century. On August 2, 2018, Apple became the first U.S. company to surpass $1 trillion in market value. Think about that for a minute. In 1997, Apple had just cut a third of its workforce and was about 90 days from going broke. Twenty-one years later, that same company is worth $1,000,000,000,000. 

Apple’s meteoric rise has been driven, in large part, by the sustained success of its blockbuster product, the iPhone. In the first quarter of 2018, iPhone sales accounted for approximately 70 percent of Apple’s total revenue. In total, Apple has sold more than 1.4 billion iPhones worldwide (three of which were sold to the author of this blog). I think it is safe to say that the iPhone has completely changed the way we live (an analysis on the societal impact of smartphones is beyond the scope of this post). 

The $1 trillion milestone reflects Apple’s explosive growth and its role in the tech industry’s rise to the forefront of the global economy. Unsurprisingly, the five most valuable U.S. companies (Apple, Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Facebook Inc.) are all technology companies. Apple and Google combined now provide the software for 99 percent of all smartphones. Facebook and Google take 59 percent of online advertising revenue in the U.S. Okay, enough statistics. We get it. The tech industry is king and Apple wears the crown (for now).