Apple has overtaken Saudi Arabia’s state owned oil company – Saudi Aramco – to become the world’s most valuable publicly traded company.
With a turnout of almost 2 trillion dollars at the close of business on Friday, the company topples Aramco, which closed the business week with a market valuation of at 1.76 trillion dollars. Saudi Aramco has been on top of the table since its market debut last year.
CNBC reports that Apple stocks has been on steady rise since the end of the first quarter, and at the close of business on Friday, Apple has a market valuation of $1.84 trillion. This is largely due to a brilliant second quarter the tech company had.
Apple’s increase in revenue is largely due to the pandemic, and increased sale of the iPad, and Mac devices. The demand for Apple’s mobile devices increased since the announcement and implementation of the lockdown in several countries of the world. The lockdown necessitated the need for devices that could be used to facilitate remote connection – which is a problem that Apple has been able to solve with its mobile devices.
“Despite COVID-19 headwinds, Apple grew revenue in every segment and geography, beating consensus revenue by 14% as ecosystem engagement rises,” Morgan Stanley analysts wrote.
While Apple celebrates a good ending of the second quarter, Amazon also pulled a remarkable twist against its projected $1.5 billion loss. At the end of the second quarter, Amazon had doubled its profit to $5.2 billion, against the $2.6 billion it made this time last year. This is after Amazon spent $4 billion on COVID-19 related expenses.
Facebook increased its user base, at the wake of the pandemic, by 12% to about 1.79 billion users. This is separate from the increased number recorded on the other platforms the company has. Monthly usage across Facebook’s other apps rose by 14% to 3.14 billion.
The company’s revenue increased by 11% to $18.69 billion.
Google’s mother company – Alphabet Inc., on the other hand recorded a 2% decline in revenue. While advertising revenue on YouTube rose from $3.6 billion to $3.81 billion, the total revenue pinned at $38.3 billion – a 2% decline from last year. However, the company was able to beat Wall Street’s prediction of $37.4 billion.
Google’s CEO, Sundar Pichai said the Coronavirus pandemic caused the company’s economy to become fragile, and that stabilization was noticed when users started returning to commercial activities online.
Sundar Pichai further stated that the company saw impressive traction in YouTube and Google Play subscription, as well as apps and game downloads increasing by 35%. Also, the Cloud segment added a large number of customers, as a result of a number of people working from home.