While there is a bit of negative press surrounding Apple
today (borked
iPhone alarms), the future for the Cupertino giant is looking quite bright.
The iPhone 4's expansion
to Verizon Wireless is fast approaching (a fully supported Verizon "iPad
2" shouldn’t be too far behind), the Mac
OS X App Store is launching
this week, and Mac computer sales have been seeing an uptick over the past
few quarters.
The company has now passed another “milestone” now that its
stock has climbed to nearly $330
a share. As a result, the company now has a market capitalization of
roughly $302 billion.
If you recall, Apple's market cap was around $222 billion in
late May of last year, putting it slightly ahead of Microsoft which was
hovering around $219 billion. Microsoft's market cap today is $240 billion.
For reference, Exxon Mobile has a market cap of $368 billion while Google
sits at $193 billion.
To back up the lofty $300+ billion market cap, Forbes' Eric Savitz says that Apple is
projected to bring in revenue of $88 billion for the fiscal 2011, putting it
ahead of Microsoft's estimated $68 billion. However, Apple is still expecting
to trail behind Hewlett-Packard (est. $129 billion) and IBM (est. $99 billion)
for fiscal 2011 revenue.
With Apple expected to make a few waves in the form of new
product in the coming weeks and months, it should be interesting to see if
there is a ceiling to the stock's meteoric rise.
