DailyTech - Apple Briefly Surpasses Exxon As Most Valuable Company in the U.S.

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Gadgets Apple Briefly Surpasses Exxon As Most Valuable Company in the U.S.
Tiffany Kaiser - August 9, 2011 4:43 PM

34 comment(s) - last by inperfectdarkn.. on Aug 12 at 10:06 PM

(Source: geekologie.com)

Apple's market value beat Exxon's for a short period of time this afternoon

Fifteen years ago, Apple Computer was struggling to stay out of the red. But since the return of Steve Jobs in 1997, Apple has become a tech superpower that continuously provides new and innovative products like the iPod, iPhone and iPad. Its gadgets and software are a hit with many consumers, and it shows as Apple reports successful figures quarter after fiscal quarter. Now, Apple's success went a step further as it jumped ahead of ExxonMobil as the most valuable company in the United States today.

According to Barron's, Apple's stock reached $369.89 with a market cap of $342.8 billion, which is based on 927 million shares. Exxon, on the other hand, fell to $68.78 with a market cap of $334.41 billion. This occurred just this afternoon around 1 p.m., making Apple the richest stock in the world for a moment in time.

More recent reports say Exxon is back at $341.82 billion in market cap while Apple is at $338.59 billion. But with Apple down 10 percent after a 52-week high of $404.50, its possible that it may beat the world's biggest oil company once again.

A benefit that Apple has over Exxon is its ability to continue releasing products that consumers love, where the oil company has very limited growth prospects that are driven by the discovery of new oil and fluctuating oil prices.

"This all goes back to Apple's distillation when it changed its name from Apple Computer, to Apple, and their role as a technology influencer in everything we touch," said Charles Golvin, an analyst specializing in mobile technology for Forrester Research. "Over the years, Apple has become a massive force on our digital lifestyles, and the way that we connect with each other."

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hmm.

By kleinma on 8/9/2011 5:26:12 PM , Rating: 5

"Over the years, Apple has become a massive force on our digital lifestyles, and the way that we connect with each other."

Really? I don't use a single Apple product, and yet I somehow manage to have a digital lifestyle and connect with other people. Apple is good at 2 things, marketing and control. Being good at those 2 things leads to high profit margins. It will be interesting to see how long they can keep that tight control over their products and still be able to do what they are doing now.

RE: hmm.

By ClownPuncher on 8/9/2011 5:28:51 PM , Rating: 1

Apple patented how your brain processes information. Sorry, you're in this mess, too.

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RE: hmm.

By ltcommanderdata on 8/9/11, Rating: -1

RE: hmm.

By Smilin on 8/9/2011 6:33:24 PM , Rating: 5

That's some pretty weak sauce man.

"Apple *helped* with this thing IBM did back in the day that is no longer used by Apple at all. Oh they also *helped* with this thing that was used in the Newton that got cancelled but later on parts of it might be used in a phone made by someone unrelated that you might be using. THEREFOR Apple solidified it's contribution to the computer industry."

I'll agree Apple is important but give me a break. The world would spin round just fine without them.

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RE: hmm.

By ltcommanderdata on 8/9/11, Rating: 0

RE: hmm.

By HrilL on 8/9/2011 7:57:16 PM , Rating: 3

All Apple has done is steal ideas and change them a little to make then "better"

The original idea of a mouse and a graphical interface was developed at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). That’s never been a secret- Steve Jobs paid a visit to PARC while working on the Macintosh so he could get some ideas. Xerox though the GUI and mouse were novelties, but didn’t think they were marketable. That’s always been Apple’s strength- taking niche products and making them mainstream. He did that with computers (1982- Apple II), GUIs (1984- Apple Macintosh), Laptops (1989- Macintosh Portable and 1991- Powerbook), PDAs (1993- Apple Newton), MP3 players (2001- iPod), and smartphones (2007- iPhone). All of those categories existed before Apple, but Apple took those ideas and turned them into every day items.

Don't think Apple has ever actually invented anything.

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RE: hmm.

By My Screen Name on 8/9/2011 10:46:57 PM , Rating: 2

Then, by your logic, no one has ever invented anything. All inventions and creative works are founded on and influenced by the knowledge and ideas others. Inventions don't pop into existence in a vacuum. Edison's inventions (light bulb, phonograph,etc.) were improvements on fundamental work that preceded his. That's just how the world works.

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RE: hmm.

By HrilL on 8/10/2011 12:48:21 PM , Rating: 2

Lets see so its okay for apple to "innovate" from others products and become very successful but when other companies try to improve upon Apple's products they go strait to court complaining they're afraid of competing. Clearly Apple could have been sued out of existence with most of their products so you'd think they'd be a little more humble. Clearly they seem to have a double standard here.

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RE: hmm.

By ltcommanderdata on 8/10/2011 1:10:51 AM , Rating: 2

quote:
Don't think Apple has ever actually invented anything.

What about Firewire? Started by Apple, submitted to the IEEE with Apple remaining the major contributor although other companies were involved. Besides consumer electronic uses, Firewire is also has aerospace uses such as being the databus in the F-22 Raptor.

OpenCL was developed by Apple and the draft submitted to the Khronos Group for feedback and ratification as an open standard. Admittedly, OpenCL has similarities to CUDA, but that can arguably be the case of having to design toward the hardware that was available. Unlike CUDA though, Apple deliberately designed OpenCL to not be tied to nVidia GPUs or GPUs at all, so that CPUs and DSPs can be supported for added flexibility.

The Quicktime file format was developed by Apple and later submitted to the MPEG working group for use as the MPEG-4 file format aka mp4, m4a, etc.

The original comment in this thread was questioning whether Apple has actually had an impact on shaping the trend of technology. Even if they never invented anything from scratch and only, as you say, continuously popularized previously niche products to the wider market, is that not have a noteworthy impact on the course of technology.

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RE: hmm.

By ohbrilliance on 8/10/2011 9:34:38 AM , Rating: 2

Actually, the original idea of the mouse and graphical interface came from Doug Engelbart's project at Stanford Research Institute. Granted, several people later joined Xerox from SRI, but those concepts weren't invented before that.

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RE: hmm.

By guffwd13 on 8/10/2011 1:33:30 PM , Rating: 2

quote:
Don't think Apple has ever actually invented anything.

Wow, man.... so much hate. Do you always look at the world so black and white?

You actually do bring up a good point though. There is no such thing as an original idea - only one idea combined with another to make something that didn't exist before. Apple may not have invented the smartphone; Steve Jobs may not have been the first guy to develop the mouse; and MP3 players existed before the iPod (I remember my Roxio CD player - it was badass), but Apple made all of them more famous and desired. If a tree falls in the forest...

You can call it manipulation of the masses. But there are some things Apple has done that has made our lives a little more interesting. If not only for pop culture and iconography and given how famous MJ, Madonna, Lady Gaga, the Beatles etc. etc. are, its something that the masses value. Just because you can't pinpoint or identify a specific product that had an effect on you directly doesn't mean your life isn't better as a result.

The lawyer thing on the other hand is really obnoxious.

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RE: hmm.

By TakinYourPoints on 8/10/2011 6:08:45 PM , Rating: 2

Execution is also important, and this is a place where Apple generally does better than most other companies out there. Proof is in the fact that they consistently provide a benchmark and a place from which nearly everyone else "copies" from.

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RE: hmm.

By lelias2k on 8/9/2011 6:20:16 PM , Rating: 3

The fact that you don't use any apple products doesn't change the truth in that statement whatsoever.

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RE: hmm.

By inperfectdarkness on 8/9/2011 11:22:14 PM , Rating: 2

apple's stock is the most overvalued on the planet. unfortunately, i don't see this trend ending anytime soon. although i'll never owned an apple product (nor will i ever), i think i need to buy some stock...

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RE: hmm.

By arazok on 8/10/2011 8:45:13 AM , Rating: 2

You’re supposed to buy the stock BEFORE it goes into orbit, which is exactly where this stock is today. Perhaps it will go higher, but sooner or later a lot of people are going to lose a lot of money on this company.

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RE: hmm.

By web2dot0 on 8/10/2011 8:44:17 PM , Rating: 2

They have $70B+ in CASH. Overvalued?

Tell me how many companies have that much cash in hand and their P/E ratios. Get outta here buddy. You know nothing.

Saying stuff like you said means nothing. That's like saying every company will eventually fail. Not way .... I didn't know that ....

If you have such a smartass ... tell us when and how. If you have nothing of value to contribute keep it to yourself.

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RE: hmm.

By TakinYourPoints on 8/10/2011 6:14:19 PM , Rating: 2

What is your opinion of it being "overvalued" based on? Their PEG ratio is actually low among tech companies such as Oracle and Amazon. They make marginally more net profit and double the gross revenue of Microsoft, their gross revenue has doubled year-over-year, and there is no sign of either slowing down right now.

The ceiling for the stock hasn't been reached yet. Right now Apple is where Microsoft was in the 90s.

Note that I'm not saying that there won't be a retracement in the stock price, it is a certainty in the short term. In the long term, there is plenty of room left to go based on their YoY growth, and their low PEG ratio which is based mainly on investor fear that the stock is overpriced. If their PEG ratio was in line with other techs then you'd be looking at a price well over $400 right now.

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RE: hmm.

By inperfectdarkness on 8/12/2011 10:06:15 PM , Rating: 2

proof more than ever, that apple products are WAY, WAY, WAY overpriced.

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RE: hmm.

By tayb on 8/10/2011 9:12:18 AM , Rating: 2

Before I say this I will say that my second smartphone "ever" was an iPhone 3G and my current smart phone for about a year has been a Droid X.

It doesn't matter if you don't use a single product because the products you use have been influenced a great deal by Apple. Look at the cell phone market prior to the iPhone. Look at Google's early screen shots of Android (it looked like Rim OS, look it up). Look at the RIM OS prior to the iPhone launch. Look at Windows Phone before the iPhone came and socked it in the mouth.

Even since then the industry has taken a lot of design cues and OS interface cues from Apple. Apple has certainly ripped off plenty of other hardware and software (cough, Android notification bar, cough) companies along the way but the fact remains that they sort of DID revolutionize the cell phone market with their original phone release.

I do not think this Droid X would even exist in its current form if it were not for Apple.

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RE: hmm.

By robinthakur on 8/10/2011 10:01:20 AM , Rating: 2

Well done for telling it like it is.

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RE: hmm.

By John Kai on 8/10/2011 1:57:34 PM , Rating: 2

Yes, as an apple hater, even I have the ability to see the truth in what you have said

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RE: hmm.

By cruisin3style on 8/10/2011 3:59:06 PM , Rating: 2

For better or worse, Apple either started, revolutionized, made popular to the masses, or dramatically changed the market of mp3 players, smartphones, and tablets. I think this is noteworthy, even if you don't own an Apple device.

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RE: hmm.

By TakinYourPoints on 8/10/2011 6:15:36 PM , Rating: 2

Nailed it

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It's

By aharris02 on 8/9/2011 5:03:17 PM , Rating: 1

ExxonMobil... not Mobile.

RE: It's

By aharris02 on 8/9/2011 6:32:43 PM , Rating: 2

-fixed-

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RE: It's

By madoka on 8/9/2011 11:06:09 PM , Rating: 5

Well if it was a Jason Mick article on Apple, not only would it have all sorts of spelling and grammatical mistakes, the title would have read:

APPLE KILLS EXXON MOBIL; HUNGERS TO EXECUTE ANDROID

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RE: It's

By aharris02 on 8/10/2011 10:19:46 AM , Rating: 2

hah! I think that just made my morning.

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hmm

By lagomorpha on 8/9/2011 5:27:59 PM , Rating: 5

I guess it shouldn't be that surprising. The safest investment is always going to be human stupidity because that's the one resource we will never run out of.

RE: hmm

By longshot94 on 8/10/2011 1:10:04 AM , Rating: 2

You hit the nail right on the head!

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RE: hmm

By arazok on 8/10/2011 8:58:19 AM , Rating: 1

Well it makes sense that a company which has built its entire platform around stupid people, is also taking investment dollars from stupid people.

Just last week I decided to see what all the fuss was about and I bought an iPad2. My god, what a hunk of shit. I had heard about Apples closed ecosystem, but I didn’t appreciate what that meant until I laid my hands on this thing. They disable flash to railroad you into itunes, and then nickel and dime you for shit you used to get for free on the open internet. And while they do this, they fool you into thinking this is a better experience. I couldn’t even turn the thing on unless I installed iTunes on my PC and gave it a credit card number. What kind of a computer requires you to own another computer just to work?

I took it back after 3 days for an Android tablet. It does everything the iPad can, supports flash, and it was way cheaper.

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What a bunch of clueless ignoramasus!

By zBernie on 8/10/2011 12:43:45 PM , Rating: 2

The unmitigated ignorance of the statements in these Apple threads never ceases to amaze me. The tone sounds like it's emanating from a gang of juvenile delinquents who are angry because they cannot afford an apple product.

Believe me, YOU ARE THE BRAINWASHED ONE, if you cannot fathom the product innovations which propelled Apple to become the worlds most valuable company.

I'm a Sr. Systems Engineer at a major IT firm, and have a great deal of exposure to "systems" of all types. I used Linux, Windows 7, Vista, and Mac OS X servers at home. For a home/desktop environment, Apple is the way to go, if you can afford it. It possesses a robust and elegant GUI, while providing the powerful BSD Unix command line.