Apple Is Now More Than Double the Size of Exxon–And Everyone Else

And yet there is room to grow. When Microsoft peaked, they had almost achieved a monopoly-sized market share. Apple on the other hand has managed to grow this large despite their most successful product having a minority market share. It is both impressive and just a little bit scary.

&gt; is a 30% stock jump from becoming the first trillion-dollar company<p>This is incorrect. The reason is share buybacks, which Apple has been aggressive with. Remember, when the price was $100 last (split adjusted), its market capitalization was $700 billion. Today, it&#x27;s price is $130, but the market capitalization is not $900 billion, but only $765 billion. This is because the number of shares outstanding has gone down significantly.<p>In this scenario, the price and market capitalization will not increase by the same percentage. In fact, it is possible for Apple to have a very good price return with no increase in market capitalization at all (consider it generates a lot of free cash flow to buy back stock).

In this case, size = market cap. Just thought it would be helpful to clarify which metric is being discussed.

And it is useful to note that the previous company in this position was also a &quot;tech&quot; company (IBM). The point being that &quot;big tech company&quot; is like &quot;big algae bloom&quot;, at some point they run out of oxygen or iron or something and die down to a much smaller size :-)

No longer &quot;beleaguered&quot;, but still doomed. :)

Can someone explain HN&#x27;s front page algorithm? This is on the front page with 0 comments &amp; 4 points.

&gt; Three decades hence, the most-valuable company is worth more than 10 times that and is a 30% stock jump from becoming the first trillion-dollar company<p>Completely meaningless and sort of untrue, if you&#x27;re willing to take the 15 seconds it takes to get your butt over to the CPI calculator.

So how does Apple navigate the Singularity? Google has more projects directed at it, some explicitly like Calico. Perhaps I&#x27;ll walk into the Google uploader and drop off my Apple watch and phone.

Would anyone like to try and justify this as being a good thing? I don&#x27;t mind some of Apple&#x27;s business practices but they have now reached the stage where they cannot be competed against.<p>They own or completely control their entire supply chain and can undercut every competitor as well as invest 10x as much as anyone else to beat the competitors.<p>What a capitalist disaster.