Brian White with Topeka Capital Markets said in a note to investors on Tuesday that previous companies with market capitalization above $500 billion were already dominant in their markets. Apple, however, has a relatively small share of many markets where it competes, giving the company potential for even more growth.
“For example, Microsoft, held over 90% market share for PC operating systems at the peak cap, while Intel had over 80% of the PC processor market and Cisco had over 70% share in the networking market,” White wrote. “On the other hand, IDC estimates Apple held just 4.7% of the PC market in (the first quarter of 2012) and 64.4% share in the mobile phone market in (the second quarter).”
Back in June, White held by some on Wall Street that the $500 billion market cap would be a price barrier to further upside at Apple. Some investors theorized that the $500 billion market cap threshold was a “barrier” for stocks.
At the time, he analyzed five U.S.-based companies that at one time enjoyed market capitalizations of about $500 billion or more: Cisco Systems, Exxon-Mobile, General Electric, Intel and Microsoft. However, among that list, White found “little similarities with Apple.”
Amazon Web Services has announced Glacier, a low-cost storage service that has been customized for data archiving and backup, the company said on Monday.
The move means 4G, which allows much faster downloads, could launch in the UK earlier than previously planned.
Apple hit the new milestone—$623.52 billion—at a time when its influence on the economy, on the stock market and on popular culture rivals that of some of the most powerful companies in U.S. history: General Motors Co., whose Corvette and Impala typified a confident postwar manufacturing giant; Microsoft, whose technology heralded the arrival of the personal computer and the early Internet age; and International Business Machines Corp., whose buttoned-down rigor inspired rivals to reach for greatness. “It is one of those iconic companies,” says Richard Sylla, professor of financial history at New York University’s Stern School of Business. “When I think about these companies, their products were used by all kinds of people and their leaders were considered geniuses.”
