For the first time in history, there is a chance to witness the emerging of a trillion dollar company. Apple, after the largest six-day stock market rally in nine years, is closing in on a $1 trillion market cap.
The tech giant currently has a $920 billion market cap, bolstered by a cash-on-hand amount of over $167 billion after $100 billion in expected stock buybacks. If Apple’s market momentum lasts through the end of the week, many analysts say they will crack $1 trillion.
“Apple can reach the [trillion dollar market cap] milestone before the end of this week if last week’s momentum persists,” Bloomberg‘s Elena Popina noted. “Just 16 bucks away.”
Even Berkshire Hathaway (BH) CEO Warren Buffett is excited, considering he just increased his stake in the company to nearly five percent. It may not sound like a tall order, but it could amount to a cool $50 billion by the end of trading Friday.
BH Vice President and Buffett business partner Charles Munger backed the move and said in a report from Axios, “I think we’ve been a little too restrained…I wish we owned more of it.”
Apple isn’t the only tech giant edging closer towards the trillion dollar mark, right behind are Amazon, Microsoft, and Alphabet, Google’s parent company. Those three companies each have market caps exceeding three-quarters of a trillion dollars.
As tech rivalries intensify, there is a growing divide between old tech giants like Apple and Microsoft, which develop consumer products, and the new players, Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, and even Google, that rely on advertisement dollars.
Nevertheless, the divide seems to be caused by recent privacy law breaches. Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella alluded to that fact saying, “you’ve got to recognize that privacy is a human right and that you need to treat it as such.”
Apple’s Tim Cook thought the same. “We’re not going to traffic in your personal life. Privacy to us is a human right, a civil liberty,” he said.
The big guns are not immune to consumer backlash, though. Apple has been having problems with slow-working iPhones after Intel chip vulnerabilities. Moreover, Amazon, whose CEO just hit a net worth of $105 billion, is garnering attention from their rapid growth and size from the antitrust crowd.
Even if, rather, when Apple hits the $1 trillion mark, the next daunting task will be staying above that mark. In a market that is highly-saturated with smartphones, computers, and other common gizmos, Apple will have to move beyond that and keep growing.
