Back in March, Microsoft was above $50 billion ahead of Apple in marketplace cap. That gap was nonetheless huge, nevertheless it was the closest the 2 had been in that measurement of appeal in decades. The pattern was obvious: I predicted that Apple would pass Microsoft, it had been only a matter of when.
Not even I assumed it will be this soon.
Today,
Office 2007 Standard, Apple has just handed Microsoft in industry cap. Now, the stocks have already been fluctuating really a tad, so this might change before the marketplace closes. But as of right now, Apple is forward, and has been for the previous number of minutes.
Some publications noted this milestone transpired again in April, but that was a a bit diverse metric. Which was the market cap to the S&P 500, which uses float-adjusted numbers. Today’s milestone is straight-up industry cap: numbers of shares outstanding multiplied by share price.
Of course,
Office Pro 2010, just how much this number means is a make any difference of debate. The truth is that it really doesn’t mean that much in terms how strong or weak a company is from a financial perspective. Nevertheless it is a good indicator of trends, and obviously stock performance. That pattern is obviously that above the past five years or so,
Buy Windows 7, Apple continues to be destroying Microsoft is gaining stock worth.
Over those past five years, Microsoft’s stock has long been largely stagnant: it’s up about 4%. Apple’s stock, meanwhile, is up some 550% about that same time frame.
Regardless of how the marketplace closes these days, you can likely expect Apple market cap to surge ahead in the coming days. A week from this coming Monday is Steve Jobs’ keynote at Apple’s WWDC event. There,
Office Professional Plus 2007, he’s widely expected to unveil the new iPhone — and undoubtedly some other things. The mere speculation about what he’ll unveil will fuel the price. Microsoft, meanwhile,
Windows 7 64 Bit, is losing key executives.
Boom! Fanboys go wild.
Update: And as the markets near closing time, Apple is now nearly $3 billion in advance of Microsoft.
Update 2: And sure enough, Apple did close the day ahead of Microsoft: $222.07 billion vs. $219.18 billion.