
Apple becomes the first $1T company - fmihaila
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/business/wp/2018/08/02/apple-becomes-the-first-1-trillion-company-in-history/
======
pliny
>“Apple’s $1 trillion cap is equal to about 5 percent of the total gross
domestic product of the United States in 2018,” said David Kass, professor of
finance at the University of Maryland. “That puts this company in
perspective.”

The comparison would be Apple net income (~$50B) vs. GDP, not market cap
(which has units of USD) vs. GDP (which has units of USD per year).

~~~
rayiner
Or, the net present value of the US economy plus assets, which is probably
pushing a quadrillion dollars.

~~~
lkrubner
No, 5 to 1 has been the ratio in recent decades. I know this was true in 1990s
when I studied this issue, and it could not have changed that much in 20
years. So 100 trillion would be my assumption.

~~~
harryh
I wonder how that breaks down into categories. Some quick googling reveals the
following:

~30 trillion in residential real estate

~6 trillion in commercial real estate

~30 trillion in pubic company value

Other big buckets I guess would be undeveloped land & private companies.

~100T sounds pretty plausible but I feel like I'm missing a big bucket or two.
Not sure what though.

~~~
mmt
> I feel like I'm missing a big bucket or two. Not sure what though.

Considering how huge an employer the public sector is in the US, it stands to
reason there's a huge value to in the government-as-an-enterprise, even if
only considering cash value of assets, such as real estate (including natural
resources!) and equipment (including military).

Of course, it might be very tough to calculate, if one includes every public
entitity down the the local level and takes into account the debt of each
entity.

------
coldcode
When I worked at Apple in the mid-90's (BS before Steve) they lost $1B while I
was there. I left and moved away because I didn't want to be there when it was
sold or went out of business. Exactly one year later Steve came back. Oh well.
Being there at the time not one person would have ever thought Apple could be
viable much less worth $1T.

~~~
k__
Somehow I found it funny that companies like Microsoft and Apple basically
survived because someone brought a new OS from the outside.

~~~
arethuza
In the case of Microsoft they directly acquired the original DOS and the
designers of Windows NT - so they've perhaps done that twice?

~~~
samstave
I didnt know this about NT - Where did they come from?

~~~
barkingcat
Dave Cutler and his team of OS designers from DEC integrated with Microsoft
software engineers to create the NT kernel. Cutler was a crucial figure in
DEC, but was waysided by management so he jumped ship, and built the design he
wanted to build at DEC (but never got management buy-in for) at Microsoft. All
outlined in the book Show Stopper! THE BREAKNECK RACE TO CREATE WINDOWS NT AND
THE NEXT GENERATION AT MICROSOFT

Also, if you took a peek at his wikipedia entry, the guy is behind almost
every large MSFT OS related initiative in the last few decades: NT, Azure,
XBox hypervisor.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler#Microsoft_(1988_to...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dave_Cutler#Microsoft_\(1988_to_Present\))

~~~
simonebrunozzi
And if I remember correctly, NT's kernel was a microkernel. It seemed to be
the best choice for the future, back then.

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
Windows NT was a hybrid: the graphics and windowing system is in the kernel
for performance reasons (try running X on commodity hardware in the early
1990s) whereas Windows CE was all microkernel.

~~~
StillBored
I wish people would stop saying its a hybrid because of the graphics being
moved into the kernel...

That doesn't make it a hybrid anymore than having the filesystem in
supervisor/kernel space does. Its a hybrid because its designed/layered like a
micro-kernel with the individual subsystems appearing to do message passing
and using subsystem managers (I/O manager, process manager, object manager,
etc) which monitor/etc the message flows. Yet, instead of doing
context/privileged switches when it passes messages/IRP's it simply makes
abstracted function calls which hand ownership of the message to other
subsystems that exist in the kernel's address space. This means you get a most
of the abstraction/stability effect of having a micro-kernel without paying
the context switch and message copy penalty.

NT has a crazy awesome design, which is somewhat obscured these days, but has
yet to really be surpassed by anyone (IMHO).

------
GlenTheMachine
I went to grad school with a guy who, the day Apple stock hit $14 a share,
decided to spend $500 of his grad student stipend to buy some. He figured
Apple's cash on hand was worth more than $14 a share.

I thought he was nuts. I was an idiot.

~~~
paulpauper
doesn't mean he held them though

~~~
ben174
This is what I tell everyone when they kick themselves for not buying BTC when
it was $0.25.

You would have sold them the second they hit $1.00. The only people I know who
got rich off BTC are those who found an old wallet on an old drive in their
garage.

~~~
RealityVoid
Define "rich". I know someone who had an almost 20x ROI with BTC and is still
holding it since 2013 I think. That is _VERY_ good ROI, I think. But the
invested sum was a paltry $1000 that was a lot for him at the time.

~~~
ben174
Your sibling posted a good example:

[https://twitter.com/gregschoen/status/70261648811761665?lang...](https://twitter.com/gregschoen/status/70261648811761665?lang=en)

Had he held on to his until the very peak, he'd be sitting on $30 million.
That's rich.

With BTC, 20x isn't that crazy. I'm talking about 50,000x if you dig up an old
enough wallet.

------
ancorevard
The most impressive part of Apple getting to a $1T valuation is that they did
it with a P/E ratio of about 20.

I would like to see Amazon attempt that.

------
KaoruAoiShiho
Here's what a trillion dollars looks like:
[http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html](http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html)

~~~
tonyedgecombe
Or about $3,000 for every person in America.

------
mikekij
"A $600 phone?! Who's going to buy a $600 phone?!" -Steve Balmer

~~~
com2kid
I worked in Windows Mobile at the time.

He was just quoting what the best market researchers had told him. We were
given a LOT of market research papers with in-depth customer surveys where
lots of people said, repeatedly, that they would "never pay money for a
phone". If you think back to then, phones were "free" with a 2 year contract.

The idea of getting someone who was used to free to switch over to $600
overnight was, by any reasonable accounts, not going to happen. The market
researchers did the safe thing and said that the status quo would continue.

Of course they were horribly wrong, but again, in the moment, trusting
literally every expert in the field is not the worst position to take.

After all that I learned to be wary of market researchers.

~~~
npunt
While phones were routinely 'free' or $99, iPods were wildly popular in 2007
and routinely cost $300+, and one of the three legs the iPhone stood on was
being an iPod.

It should have been a red flag back then if market researchers and the people
that hired them didn't see this as a convergence of music player + phone
markets; _it was the point of the keynote_! I remember people complaining then
that they had to carry both their phone and their iPod around back then.

The smartphone market was also growing then, and devices like Blackberries and
Treos were popular and cost $200+ on contract. I had been using a Treo since
2005, and remember the pain of getting apps on it and getting it to play mp3s
or use GPS maps. When I saw the keynote, it was clear it was just the next
logical step.

It's weird that Windows Mobile didn't see these trends. Perhaps it was a case
of underestimating the general market interest, though iPod's success should
have been a strong hint that consumers really wanted devices of this type and
were willing to pay. iPods were more popular than Windows Mobile devices even
then.

Finally there's just the 'sit down and use it' factor that the iPhone had.
Once you played with it, it was hard to deny that it was the future. The
fluidness and straightforwardness of the UI was so far ahead of everything at
the time. Best I can think of as a comparison is sitting in a Tesla Model S
after getting out of your Honda - it's not a question of _if_ , but _how
much_.

At $599 the iPhone was definitely expensive for the time, but any reasonable
businessperson could conclude from watching literally the entire history of
technology that component prices are always on a steady decline, and there
were other levers to lower price like carrier contracts. When the iPhone went
down to $399 a few months later it's success was a foregone conclusion - after
all, that was just a bit more than an iPod but with way more capability.

~~~
southerndrift
It seems like Bill Gates didn't want to believe. From an anecdote about Marc
Porat and General Magic [1]:

>Eventually you won’t really need a PC, because all your work will be in a
sort of cloud.”

>Suddenly there was an explosion from across the table. “MARC, THAT’S FUCKING
BULLSHIT AND YOU KNOW IT!” It was Gates.

To go all in they would have had to kill the PC. In the same way, MS didn't
embrace browsers and the Internet for a long time.

[1]:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17667776](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17667776)

~~~
candiodari
Nobody gets to upper management in an established company, ESPECIALLY not in
sales, by using their own judgement to override everyone else's.

No matter how right they may be.

If you want that sort of position, burying your own ideas deep and hide them
in shame (use them to impress interns if you must) is the only way to go.

~~~
kamaal
That's where Steve Jobs was really so better than everybody else. One should
never be afraid to put what's behind, and start again on something new. This
thing is often repeated in case of failures, but I've realized this is even
more so true in terms of success. Success is harder to put behind and start
over.

The big part of this is 'continuity'. If something works well, you are tempted
to take the next obvious steps in the process. And you should. But after while
its not hard to see that you are max'ing out the net utility you could extract
out of it. At that point, one must stop, relook and not be afraid to start on
something all over again.

Also this is so very true at an individual level as well. Never stop having a
life. So many sports people retire between 35 - 40, then their whole life
falls apart. This is also true with people have some early career success, I
have seen endless examples of people reaching career peak by 30 - 35 and then
everything falls apart, may be because they lucked out, but largely because
they just can't start again. You have to start with a new purpose when you
come to an end of an existing path.

Or time is expensive, and it shows your loss sooner or later.

------
donohoe
PetroChina was the first for a brief period back in 2007. Apple is the first
trillion-dollar company in the United States, though.

[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2007/nov/06/china](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2007/nov/06/china)

------
dev_dull
I think about such a large number this is and I really am not surprised. Apple
has created a product that I use all throughout the day. I won’t leave home
without it and I’ll drive back if I forget it. It’s so addictive that I have
to take active steps against using it too often around my wife or kids.

~~~
hndamien
Besides my family there are 5 possessions I get mildly depressed if I don't
have. My iPhone, my Bragi dash, my Tesla, my house, my Bitcoin. Maybe 2/3 of
these I can see being usurped by something better - I'll leave it to the
reader to guess.

------
_pferreir_
Is this supposed to be good news? I see lots of excitement in this thread, but
isn't having a single company worth so much money a sign that we are, as a
society, failing to create an economy that is truly competitive and fair?
We've already got banks that are too big to fail, soon we might have private
companies that are humongous to the point of having the same status.

~~~
coryfklein
Turning that argument around, in a fair and competitive market would it be
impossible for a company to grow to a $1T valuation?

Do you think the majority of Apple's $1T valuation is attributable to abuse of
government regulation or patents?

~~~
_pferreir_
> in a fair and competitive market would it be impossible for a company to
> grow to a $1T valuation?

It depends on your definition of "fair". In my view, such a market would be
regulated as to avoid that companies become too big to the point of turning
into black holes that suck everything around them.

Money attracts top talent and allows companies to buy out possible
competitors. That in turn generates more money.

~~~
coryfklein
Please explain in what way Apple is "a black hole that sucks everything around
it".

~~~
_pferreir_
Maybe Apple is not even the best example, but look at Google or Facebook. How
many potentially successful competitors have they bought off? How much more
diverse could the market be if they hadn't been allowed to do so?

------
snowwrestler
Reminds me of the email Steve Jobs sent after Apple's market cap passed Dell:

> Team, it turned out that Michael Dell wasn't perfect at predicting the
> future. Based on today's stock market close, Apple is worth more than Dell.
> Stocks go up and down, and things may be different tomorrow, but I thought
> it was worth a moment of reflection today. Steve.

[https://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16/technology/michael-
dell-s...](https://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/16/technology/michael-dell-should-
eat-his-words-apple-chief-suggests.html)

That market cap was $72.13 billion in 2006, by the way. What an amazing run
Apple has made.

------
Isamu
I dislike market cap as a measure of a company, as clearly a company can be
wildly overvalued or undervalued. It is a not as if the "wisdom of crowds" has
calculated the true value of a company.

During some of the pre-crash days early in the century, publications would
trot out companies ranked by market cap, as if that really meant something.
All I remember is various of these companies going under in the crash, despite
their pre-crash valuation.

Revenue is a big deal. And profit too, although Amazon has shown you can keep
that close to zero by reinvesting in growth, and that can work too.

~~~
coryfklein
How much is my desk worth on the market? However much somebody is willing to
pay for it.

As the article states, Apple's "value" as a company comes from, in part, the
fact that it's a good investment. Some may argue that "the fundamentals" of
the balance sheets and whatnot doesn't justify a $1T valuation, but they would
be missing the intangible parts of the business which cause it to be worth
exactly that much.

~~~
Isamu
I'm not saying Apple isn't worth a $1T market cap. I'm just saying you
wouldn't use market cap to calculate if a company were a sound long-term
investment. You'd look at the fundamentals, then make a determination of what
you think the long-term value of the business is, then you could look at the
current market cap and determine if it is under- or overvalued. Breathless
reporting on the market cap of companies is sloppy, I think. The market cap
kinda floats around, and worst case may be completely unrelated to the true
long term value of a company.

Warren Buffet for some time said that he thought Apple was undervalued. I have
no idea what he currently thinks, but it is probably still a reasonable value.

~~~
Allvitende
>Warren Buffet for some time said that he thought Apple was undervalued. I
have no idea what he currently thinks, but it is probably still a reasonable
value.

He currently owns ~5% of the company.

------
almost_usual
"For comparison, the same $10,000 invested in an Standard & Poor’s 500-stock
index fund would now be worth $2 million."

That doesn't seem too bad considering the risk involved investing in a single
stock.

~~~
coryfklein
The number I want to know: How would that $10,000 in S&P 500 fare if AAPL was
removed from the index for the duration of the calculations.

Probably not _significantly_ less, but I'd be curious anyway.

------
throwaway5752
This has some decent charts and historical perspective (inflation adjusted):
[https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/08/22/a-history-...](https://www.fool.com/investing/general/2012/08/22/a-history-
of-ridiculously-big-companies.aspx)

------
donohoe
PetroChina was the first for a brief period back in 2007.

Apple is the first trillion-dollar company in the United States, though.

[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2007/nov/06/china](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2007/nov/06/china)

------
nojvek
I have to say this is an impressive achievement for Apple. Good on them.
Although I am sad that an insane amount of wealth is being accrued by the few.
The top 6 US companies (all of them tech) are worth more than 5 trillion.
That's almost 30% of US GDP.

In the last few years there's been an unprecedented rise in wealth yet as both
a nation, and a part of a global civilization, we are moving back in some
aspects. Even locally, housing is a shit show in the valley and trillion
dollar valuations makes it worse for the service class.

Extreme poverty in US is on the rise, tons of people are dying of preventable
health conditions. Healthcare and education are getting more expensive. Global
warming and pollution aren't really turning back.

I guess the only mega billionaire I respect is Bill Gates because he's truly
putting his money where it matters. Funding all sorts of moon shots like clean
nuclear energy, wiping malaria e.t.c

I'm not saying its Apple's job to fix it. It really isn't anyone's job to fix
the big problems. BUT with the insane amount of cash the big tech cos have,
that's hellova resources that could be invested towards bringing the entire
human civilization forward to a peaceful, clean, educated and a healthy planet
where everyone has the basics and we're not dying because of very preventable
issues.

~~~
harias
They pay taxes, shouldn't government take care of these issues? Isn't that
what governments are for?

------
haaen
Paul Graham in 2015:

It would have been a good deal for Apple's board to give Steve 95% of the
company.

Market cap when he came back: 1.73b.

5% now: 33b.

[https://twitter.com/paulg/status/674760647767285761](https://twitter.com/paulg/status/674760647767285761)

Today, 5% of the company is 50 bilion. Jobs became de facto chief after then-
CEO Gil Amelio was ousted in July 1997 (wiki). So that would make an
annualized AAPL gain of 17.3 percent, excluding dividends. Even more
impressive.

------
mkaziz
I wish I'd bought Apple stock in December instead of Bitcoin.

~~~
themihai
Speculative investments are like gambling. Don't be sorry for Apple. Try
FB...they may hit the trillion dollar cap as well..who knows...it's all just
speculation.

~~~
bufferoverflow
FB has a problem with young people leaving. I wouldn't invest in FB.

~~~
parenthesis
What are these young people using instead? WhatsApp? Instagram?

~~~
bufferoverflow
Yes,and Snapchat.

------
KaoruAoiShiho
Is Samsung Electronics ridiculously undervalued or what? It generates more
profit than Apple [https://wccftech.com/samsung-posted-higher-profit-than-
apple...](https://wccftech.com/samsung-posted-higher-profit-than-
apple-q2-2018/) yet is valued at only $290 billion instead of $1000 billion.
What the heck.

~~~
temuze
I think there's three big reasons.

Reason #1: Apple has 243.7B in cash right now. That'll already push them to
nearly Samsung's valuation.

Reason #2: Samsung's business is more vulnerable. Most of their profits came
from the chips division:

[https://money.cnn.com/2017/07/27/technology/samsung-
profit-a...](https://money.cnn.com/2017/07/27/technology/samsung-profit-
apple/index.html)

Samsung sells components to many companies, including Apple. In fact, Samsung
makes more money from iPhone than they do from the Galaxy S8:

[https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/2/16404430/s...](https://www.theverge.com/circuitbreaker/2017/10/2/16404430/samsung-
iphone-x-galaxy-s8-screen-components-money-revenue-display)

As an OEM, Samsung has a much more vulnerable moat. What happens when Apple
starts to make those components on their own? They already started doing it
with processors. What about memory? They buy a ton of memory from Samsung.

Reason #3: reality distortion field :)

~~~
tooltalk
#1, so you agree that it is undervalued?

#2, Samsung's business is diversified, not vulnerable. During the DRAM glut
years ago, the mobile division's higher profit helped cushion their chip
division's lower profit. Now, it's the other way around. Also, unlike Apple's
reliance on a single product line, their mobile sales come from many different
models, greater than the sales of Apple's in aggregate, but, as individual
models, lower than that of Apple iPhone. CNN's comparison likewise is
nonsensical.

Apple accounts for about ~3 or 4% of Samsung's overall sales last I checked.
Apple has significantly cut their reliance on Samsung, especially after the
legal battle started in early 2012's, and stopped using Samsung's parts before
-- for instance, the earlier iPhone Ax chips were designed and manufactured by
Samsung in Texas, USA, but now Apple designs them in-house (after PA-semi and
Intrinsity acquisition in 2008 and 2010) and outsources manufacturing to
Taiwan/China. That was about 6 years ago and Samsung is still laughing their
way to the bank with about $50B in profit last year.

#3, I've too noticed that a lot of Apple fanbois are out of touch with the
reality at times (is that what you call reality distortion field?). Congrat
Apple for achieving such huge milestone and I love my MBP which is 6 years old
and still going strong, but surely, no sane mind would believe that Samsung
would be out of business (or vulnerable) without Apple.

~~~
earenndil
> outsourced manufacturing to Taiwan/China

Actually, it's 50/50 chips produced by TSMC (taiwan semiconductor) and
samsung.

~~~
tooltalk
That was years ago when Samsung was on 14nm (vs TSMC's 16nm). Apple completely
moved all US based A chips manufacturing to Taiwan.

------
tensecondflash
I like to think that between AAPL dividends and Apple hardware resale value
(not even counting the value of the stock I’m holding on to) my spending on
iPhones and MacBooks and Apple Watches has all been free.

Also, I sometimes I buy put options before a big product reveal in advance of
the frequent stock price drop when all the analysts say “Is that what all the
hype was about? That’ll never sell!”. Of course the stock prices pops back up
again after Apple can’t keep up with demand.

------
leptoniscool
Market cap is number of shares times share price. Is this equivalent to total
amount of money that went into AAPL? Did investors put in 1 trillion dollars?

~~~
filleokus
I don't think so. All of the money put into to AAPL (via the public stock
market) is all the stocks issued via public offerings * the price of the
offering, no? After that they have just been traded without Apple seeing any
of that money. Stocks given as compensation also contribute in some way, if we
expand on "money" as to include forgone income by the employees.

------
rayiner
Good for it. Becoming a trillion dollar company selling quality products
people love. Not data mining everything about your life and using it for
advertising (Google), ruthlessly destroying competition (Microsoft), or
destroying the environment (Exxon). How old fashioned.

~~~
tschellenbach
On the other hand. I think Google creates way more value for the world, they
are just not as good as Apple at capturing that value.

Android, Maps, Docs, Gmail, Navigation, Analytics are all (mostly) free.

~~~
onion2k
They're not free. They just don't cost _money_. Arguably they're very
expensive.

~~~
reaperducer
_They 're not free. They just don't cost money. Arguably they're very
expensive._

This is a distinction most people don't grasp. I didn't, myself, until
recently when a briefing from the legal department resulted in scouring the
word "free" from eight web sites and replacing the word with "at no cost."

~~~
corysama
DuckDuckGo looking nicer every day.

~~~
bduerst
DDG is essentially just a reskin of Bing.

~~~
corysama
A privacy filter over Bing is fine by me. Lately I've been switching to
incongnito every time I search for any product, video or anything to do with
news or politics. It's getting ridiculous. I should just switch to DDG
permanently.

~~~
earenndil
Use startpage, then. It's a reskin over google, which seems to provide better
results.

------
deathanatos
Alphabet has two stock symbols (GOOG & GOOGL); they have a combined market cap
of ~$1.6T. Does this not count?

~~~
gizmodo59
I think the stock quotes represent the same entity. So it wont be ~850B +
~850B.

~~~
deathanatos
I guess I just assumed the stock data would all be per-ticker-symbol, that is,
market cap on a given symbol would simply be the number of shares on that
symbol times the price. But Google itself does report _identical_ market caps,
now that I look closer, and that seems unlikely.

------
sidcool
It is an achievement in almost all facets of success. It is a perfect story of
the great American dream. Most products throughout their history have been
world class. Congratulations Apple and good luck for the future.

------
ksec
Just to give some context, the first publicly traded company to hit $1T USD
market cap was Petrol China, but that was only in HK, in mainland china, its
stock were never valued more than $500B. And it has only 5% of stock in HK
open market.

Compare to AAPL today.

Apple still has a ridiculously low P/E of ~17. Which is how everyone values a
hardware company. And has stayed within this P/E range since the death of
Steve Jobs. Apple hasn't been selling more iPhone than the last super cycle
aka iPhone 6, which is when the plus version was first introduced. But Apple's
iPhone ASP has been up $100+, and Apple has been buying back LOTS of share,
which is one of the main reason pushing its stock price upwards.

A lot of analyst likes to focus on the flat unit sales, and the higher ASP. In
reality it is the user base growth that is much more important. Tim Cook
mentioned a double digit percentage growth in iPhone. That puts Apple with
close to 800M active iPhone users. Roughly 70M+ of iPhone users coming are
either new to smartphone or switching from Android. So while Apple's iPhone
sales has been flat for a few years, its iPhone user base has matched from
600M to 800M. Given the moat, or the stickiness of Apple ecosystem, users are
likely going to buy another iPhone, staying within the ecosystem than going to
Android.

The Mac are also adding lots of new users, 60% of Mac buyer are new to Apple.
This continuous trend means Apple is adding 10M new Mac users YoY. The last
reported figure there were roughly 150M active Mac users. If we look at the
sales figures and Active Mac users over time, it is clear the average Mac
lifecycle is now on 4 - 5 years before upgrade.

The iPad has roughly 300M, may be now closer to 400M iPad users. Again while
the sales hasn't grown, its user base is growing.

Both Horace Dediu and Benedict Evans are expecting 1.5 billion Active devices
by either late 2018 or mid 2019. As impossible it may seems, Apple is STILL
growing its user base.

And there are few more things to fuel future growth. The rumoured of slightly
cheaper iPhone and Mac. We should have a sub $700 6.1" LCD iPhone coming this
September. Along with a better sub $1000 entry level MacBook. And I believe
the best iPad has yet to come, still with lots of potentials.

Yes, I hate the TouchBar, Yes I absolutely hate the new bloody keyboard they
put on MacBook. And I don't like FaceID much, still prefer under screen finger
print. But all these aside, Apple is still doing extremely well, and its
bigger picture is good with no immediate risk at its current valuation. Cant
say the same for Microsoft, Google, or Amazon. And they have just finish
moving into its new Spaceship. There are lots of mental preparation and
inefficiency involved when moving to a whole campus. I hope they are now
settle and up their productivity.

To sum it up, with a P/E less then 20, and the most Net Cash ( ~$130B ) any
company has in the world, they are truly worth their $1T Market Cap.

Congrats AAPL.

P.S - Steve probably would have sent another note to all employees about Dell.
:P

------
cdransf
My grandparents bought and still own Apple stock from their IPO. Seems like
good news for them.

~~~
kevmo
That's great. Companies need to start IPOing earlier again.

[http://blog.pmarca.com/2013/03/26/unshackle-the-middle-
class...](http://blog.pmarca.com/2013/03/26/unshackle-the-middle-class/)

------
sungju1203
Samsung is making much more Operating Income than AAPL. Why their market cap
is so low?

~~~
TuringNYC
Market cap is based on a half-dozen factors, but primarily a factor of

\- assets (e.g., cash on hand and other things that can be converted to cash),

-Operating Income, and

\- _growth_ \-- meaning how quickly the annual operating income can grow (my
guess is Samsung's growth is lower than Apple's)

------
calvinbhai
Not yet

[https://twitter.com/ampressman/status/1025033219803103232](https://twitter.com/ampressman/status/1025033219803103232)

$AAPL needs to be $207.0425 to be $1T company

~~~
gbear605
This one is actually correct. It tapped the $207.05 value briefly - see
"Today's High" at
[https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/aapl](https://www.nasdaq.com/symbol/aapl). That
tweet is from a previous time earlier today, just after the markets opened.

------
bcks
Who's "beleaguered" now?

------
Bromskloss
Psst! That's an arbitrary number.

------
benologist
Avoided the most taxes in history too!

~~~
bepotts
It's legal to find ways to reduce your tax burden.

~~~
trumped
the tax system should be made simpler... no loopholes (I know it is probably
not easy to accomplish, but worth a try) ... because middle class can't afford
to avoid taxes like the rich does it.

~~~
penagwin
That's simply not possible. The IRS themselves state that "tax evasion" is
illegal, but "tax avoidance" isn't. A "loophole" is the use of deductibles to
lower the amount you pay in taxes, that you choose to try to get.

For example, you could get lower taxes by "getting married", even if you're
just friends you can get lower tax rates, etc. That's a "loophole". Are we
supposed to prove they "really wanted to get married"? Now apply that to
potentially all deductables.....

~~~
themihai
>>For example, you could get lower taxes by "getting married", even if you're
just friends you can get lower tax rates, etc. That's a "loophole". Are we
supposed to prove they "really wanted to get married"? Now apply that to
potentially all deductables.....

Ha ha ... What about a trillion dollar company paying less than 0.9% tax in
countries where tax is minimum 13-19% ? Are we supposed to prove they really
tried to evade tax? Or companies not paying any tax at all by siphoning
profits through fictive loans in places where they pay little or no tax?

I'm not sure if you get this but the issue is not about someone getting
married to get lower taxes(even though that would be illegal just like married
someone to get permanent residency is illegal).

[https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/05/-sp-
luxembo...](https://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/nov/05/-sp-luxembourg-
tax-files-tax-avoidance-industrial-scale)

~~~
penagwin
We both agree on the problem that they should be paying more. I suggest that
fixing "loopholes" isn't the solution, and instead may consider a "hard-
minimum" for multi-billion dollar companies. No deductions beyond x%.

------
craftyguy
> The company hit a $1tn market capitalisation 42 years after it was founded
> and 117 years after US Steel became the first company to be valued at $1bn
> in 1901.

Is that adjusted for inflation?

------
wil_I_am_27
Soon Amazon will be in this list.

------
api
... on design and user experience.

Take note.

------
Steve886
Alright. Who's next?

~~~
RankingMember
Gotta be Alphabet

------
IloveHN84
Without paying taxes, or a very small percentage, it's a fake achievement.

~~~
mikestew
Are you suggesting that AAPL gets tax breaks that, say, Exxon doesn't?

------
beagledude
remember the guy who gave up his Apple founding stock?

------
tehabe
An honest question, why do people really care about the market capitalisation
of a company?

~~~
cakebrewery
Because investing has become integral in personal finance and market cap gives
an estimate of a company's value, room to grow, etc.

~~~
kovek
I appreciate how you state that investing has become an internal part of
personal finance. I agree with you, but unfortunately nobody taught us this
where I am from.

~~~
TheGRS
Same for me, other than tidbits I got from my parents occasionally. Like many
of the important things I learned in life, I had to teach myself.

------
sna1l
First public trillion dollar company, right?

Source: [http://www.visualcapitalist.com/most-valuable-companies-
all-...](http://www.visualcapitalist.com/most-valuable-companies-all-time/)

~~~
ryanmercer
I guess you missed where that infographic says "inf. adjusted".

Regardless of inflation adjusted or not, Dutch East India shouldn't be
considered given their rampant use of slave labor. doing a lot of business off
of slave trade (pretty easy to make money when you're kidnapping people and
sailing them across an ocean then selling them), having a nearly absolute
monopoly, and uh... being government backed.

~~~
jandrese
Kind of arbitrary to exclude a company because it uses slave labor or other
immoral practices. Your list of giant multinationals would be very short
indeed. No textile producers for example except for some tiny boutique shops.
No petrochemcial companies at all. No agribusiness. Modern society is built on
the suffering of the poor and disenfranchised.

~~~
ryanmercer
>Kind of arbitrary to exclude a company because it uses slave labor or other
immoral practices.

No it is arbitrary to say "nuh uh this company back when was worth a trillion
dollars, if we adjust for inflation". Apple is literally the first worth a
trillion United States dollars, a currency that did not even exist for the
first 190 years of the Dutch East India company.

------
11thEarlOfMar
Not so fast, they bought back $20 Billion in stock last quarter.

~~~
donarb
That has been accounted for already. Before the buyback, the stock would have
had to reach $203, after the buyback, the stock needs to reach $207.

------
HaHa31
No. It is the first PUBLICALY TRADED company on the US STOCK MARKET to be
valued at $1T. There have been many companies that have broken that point in
inflation-adjusted and NON-inflation-adjusted valuations. Three big ones are
the Dutch East India company, the most valuable company in history, Standard
Oil, the most valuable US company ever, and Saudi Aramco, the current, most
valuable company. I've seen to many articles claiming this today, so I rage
wrote this on mobile.

See article for numbers: [http://www.visualcapitalist.com/most-valuable-
companies-all-...](http://www.visualcapitalist.com/most-valuable-companies-
all-time/)

~~~
Leary
I have found the calculations for these historic companies to be dubious. They
mostly calculate the worth of a company in relation to some historical GDP
figure and apply that percentage on a modern GDP figure.

Think about it, how can the Dutch East Indies company be worth $7 trillion
dollars when the Netherlands today has a GDP of only $900 Billion, which is
after centuries of economic growth.

The Dutch East Indies company may have been _comparably_ more powerful in
relation to its time though.

~~~
hokumguru
The VOC basically owned the entirety of trade in SEA. It's not hard to imagine
a valuation of 7 trillion when they had a monopoly of an entire continent's
worth of trade (spices!) for two centuries.

~~~
Leary
Let's put it this way. According to Maddison,

[https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/relea...](https://www.rug.nl/ggdc/historicaldevelopment/maddison/releases/maddison-
database-2010)

The entire world's GDP in 1700 was $371 Billion (1990 International Dollars).
That would mean the VOC's value then was ~10x the global GDP, which I find
hard to believe.

Or if that doesn't convince you, consider the world population in 1700 was 700
million people. That would mean the Dutch Indies Company's value per person is
$10,000!

~~~
LolWolf
10,000! is quite a large number, to be fair.

Kidding aside, I agree: I'm also quite dubious of this article's claim on the
East India company being worth as much as was computed.

------
maxshmax
It's worth noting that this is the first U.S. company to hit $1 trillion, not
in the world. Also, it's still intraday, so Apple has not technically reached
that point yet.

~~~
JumpCrisscross
> _this is the first U.S. company to hit $1 trillion_

What's the other one?

~~~
maxshmax
PetroChina did it in 2007: [https://www.marketwatch.com/story/petrochina-
soars-to-1-tril...](https://www.marketwatch.com/story/petrochina-soars-
to-1-trillion-market-cap-in-debut)

*edited to include link

~~~
yesforwhat
including state owned companies, which is really just government assets
themselves, isn't really relevant.

------
paulpauper
Everyone talks about Apple as the best possible investment, but an investment
in XEM or XRP (Nem or Ripple or Stellar Lumens) in early 2017 surpassed all of
Apple in its 30 year history.

My money is on Google, Facebook or Amazon eventually surpassing Apple though

~~~
jlv2
> but an investment in XEM or XRP (Nem or Ripple or Stellar Lumens)

None of those is an investment in something with inherent worth. Hence, I'd
not call them an investment, but pure speculation.

~~~
chatmasta
The worth of a share is what someone will pay you for it.

~~~
losteric
A share is fractional ownership of the underlying company and all it's assets
- that is what gives it value.

A "cryptocurrency" is merely worth what someone else is willing to pay (hence
speculative).

~~~
chatmasta
No, what gives a share value is that someone else is willing to buy it from
you for a certain price. The fact that it represents fractional ownership is
_why_ someone is willing to pay a certain price to buy it from you. But
fundamentally, the value only exists as long as there is a counterparty.

~~~
xoa
>No, what gives a share value is that someone else is willing to buy it from
you for a certain price.

What the heck? This is absolutely wrong. The fundamental basis of the value of
a share is that _it results in gaining a portion of the company 's profits_.
The company makes money and then _pays some of that out_ to shareholders. Even
companies that make zero money _now_ have shares valued at least in part on
expectations of what money they might make in the future.

Sure, humans are obviously not perfect at anticipating and researching and
calculating all this by any means. We are not homo economicus either. There is
room for irrationality, for misjudgements, etc. But even with all that shares
are just that, _shares_. The actual ownership of a public company is about
shares (yes, there can be different classes in some cases). They represent
power and returns, even if it's decentralized.

So a share does in fact have an innate value in terms of the actual cash it
can spin off for a shareholder and the input to the company it gives them.
Multipliers will vary based on risk and future projections and such, but it's
perfectly possible to hold a lot of boring stocks that may not grow much but
just print money, consistently, year after year with minimal management. This
is not at all the same as cryptocurrencies or any pure asset, where what you
ultimately get from it depends purely on what someone else will pay you for
it.

------
paulpauper
I don't own an Iphone and neither does anyone I know, but good for them.

------
rainbowmverse
Apple is worth $1 trillion in the same way an asteroid hurtling toward Earth
contains $1 trillion in precious metals.

Tim Cook has yet to prove he can do more than maximize profits while someone
somewhere is working on the thing that'll undermine the source of Apple's
value while they're not looking.

edit: generalized away from a specific example because it distracted from the
point.

~~~
alexc05
I'm pretty much a microsoft fanboy but - We had a batch of surface devices at
the office and they all had massive battery issues. Like that scary thing
where it starts to expand and bend the metal.

I think we had to mail it back to the manufacturer in a specially designed
hard-case.

With quality like that - I'm not sure they're being undermined that badly yet.

I think MS are doing other great stuff but surface laptop/tablets are probably
not it.

------
amaccuish
Hmm. I'm waiting to see what the iPhones are like. I sense trouble brewing.

------
metalliqaz
If time travel existed, I'd go back and buy me some 1980's Apple stock. I
think we just proved time travel can't happen.

~~~
newswriter99
Just go back to 2009 and buy bitcoin, then sell it on 15 Dec 2017 at $17,500.

~~~
TuringNYC
Pretty awesome how we can all be millionaires as long as we can complete
historical information and can choose our buy and sell dates :-)

------
pseudonym2
This will be very controversial, especially in HN, but market cap doesn't mean
shit.

Apple has roughly $50B in revenue and $120B in equity. Most of it's products
could be replaced in less than 5 years by a competitor. Market cap is a
measure of public trust among other things but _not_ actual worth or value to
society.

~~~
captain_murdock
On top of the holes in your financial argument, you've overlooked something in
your competitor argument.

A competitor could replace most of Apple's current products in 5 years, but
where will Apple be in 5 years? They'll be five years ahead.

~~~
wellboy
Replacing means that Apple doesn't innovate further.

This always happens with big companies, Nokia, Ericsson, Yahoo, they are
replaced by new companies.

5 years ahead for the big company means no progress.

Apple is where it was 5 years ago in terms of innovation. They havent done
anything new that was meaningful and only reap the benefits of what jobs
invented 15y ago.

