Apple beats Microsoft, Google and Amazon to $1 trillion valuation

Apple has just won the race to be the first one trillion dollars publicly traded tech company after it’s share price passed $207.04 a share today.

The achievement was due to a solid financial quarter in which the company posted a record $53 billion revenue, and of course a long history of beating expectations despite constant predictions that the company has peaked.

The feat has of course been a race because the stock market’s top 10  is currently dominated by tech companies, with Amazon topping $900 billion in market cap and Google and Microsoft worth more than $800 billion.

Apple’s growth has been largely based on the performance of the iPhone, whose growth appears to be levelling off.  Apple, however, appears to have found a way to extract more money from their base of 1.3 billion devices, with more revenue coming from services.

At the time of writing, Apple has already retreated from the $1 trillion valuations,  and the fate of the last company to reach $1 trillion may be an object lesson to investors.

Oil giant PetroChina (PTR) briefly topped a trillion dollar valuation in 2007 when its stock began trading in Shanghai, but shares quickly plunged afterwards. That company is now worth about $205 billion.

Via CNN