![]() ![]() Indeed, most of the world's corporate titans are tech giants that have turned devices into steady and predictable revenue streams. Yet the top 10 are almost all considered tech companies, even if they make things (Tesla) or sell things (Amazon). US healthcare giants UnitedHealth ($455 billion) and Eli Lilly ($420 billion) are also in the top 20, along with Denmark's Novo Nordisk ($353 billion) Berkshire Hathaway leads with a market value of around $728 billion Visa makes the top 20 with a market cap of $465 billion. Not surprisingly, healthcare and finance are represented in the top ranks. Saudi Aramco isn't entirely alone: oil giant ExxonMobil (market cap around $440 billion) is hanging on in the top 20. Until a decade ago, many of the most valuable companies were traditional long-standing blue-chip industrial behemoths like Exxon and Chevron, General Electric, AT&T. Right behind Apple is Saudi Aramco as the world's second biggest company and a bit of an outlier in the top 10. On January 3, 2022, Apple became the first company ever to surpass $3 trillion in market value, and it remains the world's largest today. Once Apple moved beyond hardware to software and services, its revenue growth became unstoppable. Then Apple started borrowing from Microsoft's playbook: It launched news and games subscriptions, a video streaming service, and even its own credit card. You might not need a new smartphone or laptop every year, but a software license, Cloud-computing package or videogame subscription, means ongoing payments-and client stickiness. While the popularity with consumers of products like iPhones, iMacs and tablets propelled Apple to new heights, whenever sales appeared to slow, its market capitalization suffered.īy contrast, Microsoft built itself into one of the world's largest companies with a focus on steady recurring revenue streams. Amazon's market cap surpassed both of those giants in January 2019.įor years, Apple-also one of the world's most admired companies-has seen its market cap fall victim to its sales success. Microsoft has dethroned Apple a few times, most recently in October 2021. Market capitalization can change quickly, and the years have seen much see-saw in the rankings of the world's biggest companies. ![]() What about Google and Facebook (pardon, Meta)? Only a few companies legitimately compete for the title of most valuable publicly traded company and yet the types of companies that top the list change with the times. Yet it has, over the years, lost the title of world's largest many times-to Microsoft, to Amazon, even to Saudi Arabia's Aramco. With Apple's stock hitting new highs after announcing its latest innovation-in the burgeoning field of virtual reality products-the company is unlikely to be dislodged from its position as the world's largest company by market capitalization any time soon. ![]()
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