Do you wanna hear something really funny? Apple is more valuable than the apples! How's that possible? Well, back in 2005, the global production of apples was at least 55 million tonnes, with a value of almost $10 billion. Obviously, in the next years, prices increased, maybe production too, but I don't think they managed to get to a value higher than $160 billion. Why so much? Well, as I was just saying...Apple is more valuable than the apples!
Since you don't have to take my word for granted, I'll give you the numbers right away, but first, you need to know one more thing... Apart from (severely) beating the market value of all fruits bearing its name(or, better said, the ones that gave the Cupertino-based company its name), Apple also managed to climb above Google, and this is something that really took me by surprise, I must admit it! Now, the numbers...
• Microsoft (MSFT) - $255,648,204,000
• IBM (IBM) - $169,964,678,000
• Apple (AAPL) - $157,012,662,240
• Google (GOOG) - $156,392,862,560
• Cisco (CSCO) - $142,125,692,160
• Intel (INTC) - $135,658,860,000
• Hewlett-Packard (HPQ) - $111,866,423,760
• Nokia (NOK) - $97,746,699,520
• Research In Motion (RIMM) - $71,143,935,000
• Disney (DIS) - $59,257,501,500
• Dell (DELL) - $50,483,256,060
• Sony (SNE) - $38,423,938,420
• Amazon (AMZN) - $36,292,728,410
• Yahoo! (YHOO) - $28,020,673,800
• Adobe (ADBE) - $24,198,781,026
• Motorola (MOT) - $22,415,964,785
• RealNetworks (RNWK) - $1,002,688,900
• Palm (PALM) - $839,364,300
• Napster (NAPS) - $75,203,000
As you can see, Yahoo doesn't look too well, but if we look at the top, and consider Apple's incredible push since the release of the iPhone, I wouldn't be surprised to see them grab the second place by the end of this decade.
At last, it is also worth being mentioned that Google's CEO, Eric Schmidt, is also a member of Apple's board of directors. If we look at Google's moves in the last year, I think they are also going to go above IBM in a few years. By the looks of the numbers above, I think it's pretty obvious that, despite all of its problems, Microsoft remains a rock very hard to break, for now...
