“This is the fourth quarter in a row of double-digit growth for Apple, pushing it into trillion-dollar territory at a time when other tech stocks like Facebook and Twitter have struggled.”
Tech giant Apple has become the first private-sector company in history to hit a stock market valuation of one trillion dollars.
The reaching of the milestone on Thursday crowned a decade-long rise fuelled by its ubiquitous iPhone that transformed the US company from a niche player in personal computers into a global powerhouse spanning entertainment and communications.
Its stock jumped 2.8 percent to as high as $207.05, bringing its gain to about nine percent since Tuesday when its reported June-quarter results above expectations and said it bought back $20bn of its own shares.
Apple’s revenue in the fiscal third quarter soared 17 percent to $53.3bn from the same period a year earlier on the back of sales of pricier iPhones, online services and wearable devices.
Since starting out in a family garage in California’s Silicon Valley more than 40 years ago, Apple weathered boardroom drama, market missteps, and even a close call with bankruptcy on its path to the milestone, thanks to products that radically transformed lifestyles and the way we communicate with each other.
Al Jazeera’s Kristen Saloomey, reporting from New York, said there was some concern that Apple, a company known for its hardware, had little room left to grow given saturation in the mobile-phone market.
“But its latest earnings report put that worry to rest,” she added, noting that the rise was driven by strong demand for its expensive phone, the iPhone X.
“It’s not just hardware behind the company’s success. The tech giant is also seeing growth in its services business, which includes the App Store, Apple Music and Apple Pay. Sixty percent of the company’s sales are international and every region except Japan reported double-digit growth.
“This is the fourth quarter in a row of double-digit growth for Apple, pushing it into trillion-dollar territory at a time when other tech stocks like Facebook and Twitter have struggled.”
Creative Strategies analyst Carolina Milanesi told AFP news agency that Apple’s symbolic stock market accomplishment was a “natural result” given the tech company’s winning steps, and is “certainly not the finish line”.
Sourced from Al-Jazeera.
