For the first time in years, Apple gave up its crown as the world's most valuable publicly traded company on Monday, at least for part of the trading day.
Shares of the iPhone maker have dropped sharply over the past several weeks, and the decline has erased about US$300 billion in market capitalisation from the company, which crested at a record US$1.1 trillion valuation in early October. The slump ultimately took the company's market cap below that of Microsoft's on Monday, the first time in more than eight years that Microsoft was worth more by this metric. It was also the first time since 2013 that any company topped it, ever since Apple eclipsed Exxon Mobil in size, according to an analysis of Bloomberg data.
Apple's market cap hovered around US$823.66 billion as of 3:15 pm in New York, while Microsoft's stood at US$823.90 billion, although the two spent much of Monday afternoon jockeying for the top seat in intraday action. Shares of Apple rose 0.9 per cent, erasing an earlier decline, while Microsoft climbed 3.2 per cent.
Apple and Microsoft have one of the most storied rivalries in Silicon Valley, one that goes back to the mid-1970s, when both were founded within a year of each other and focused on making breakthroughs in developing personal computers. Microsoft dominated in the dot-com era but subsequently lost ground as the Cupertino, California-based Apple launched such iconic products as the iPod and especially the iPhone, which would grow to become its most important product line.
Yet now, that very product is among the the challenges facing Apple, with concerns over weak iPhone demand pressuring shares to fall more than 25 per cent from record levels.
