Apple replaces Exxon as No. 1 in market value
Apple surpassed Exxon Mobil to seize the title of world’s most valuable company, as investor confidence in high-tech growth prospects exceeded faith in the oil industry’s gushing profits.
While both companies declined Wednesday, Exxon fell more, leaving it with a market value of $330.8 billion, compared with $337.2 billion for Apple at the close of U.S. markets. Tuesday was the first time Apple passed Exxon in intraday trading.
The showdown with Exxon follows Apple’s 14-year transformation from a personal-computer also-ran into a seller of everything from smart phones to digital music. Apple has already eclipsed Microsoft, IBM and Intel, whose dominance of the technology industry in the 1990s helped nudge Apple to the fringes of the PC market.
“The Apple of today is different from the Apple of even a few years ago,” Shaw Wu, an analyst at Sterne Agee & Leach, said. “People who buy Apple tend to buy big and get your friends and family to do it as well. There’s nothing else like that.”
More bad news for all the Apple-haters out there…