Apple Cements Position as Most Valuable Company In the World — Again

Tim Cook can do no wrong.

Just weeks after announcing a completely new (and untested) product segment, his company has reached new heights: becoming the first corporation in the world to hit the $3 trillion market cap. And if Apple seems unfazed by the achievement, it's probably because this isn't the first time the company has made waves for its market cap.

In fact, Apple was the first publicly traded U.S. corporation to hit the $1 trillion market cap, snubbing the likes of Google and Microsoft to reach that milestone in 2018. While it took Apple nearly 40 years to become a $1 trillion company from the time of its IPO, hitting the next trillion was easy breezy, taking the iPhone maker over two years to do so.

Which brings us to today. While the company took a little longer to get here (around three years), the fact that it's even at the $3 trillion market cap is mind boggling in itself. So what gives? Well, according to reports, there's a lot at play here, none of which has anything to do with artificial intelligence. Investors are simply flocking towards Apple stocks because of the company's strong fundamentals, which includes things like earnings growth across its product segments and a generous policy of regularly rewarding shareholders with buybacks and through dividends.

With a business like that, some fund managers regret not owning nearly as much of the company's stock as they would have liked, particularly given that the company is expected to become even more valuable in the coming years. Are we talking $4 trillion in the next five years? Who knows..

That said, the company's foray into producing augmented-reality headsets has hit a snag. According to the Financial Times, the Cupertino, Calif.-based company has cut the production forecast for the so-called spatial computing devices to under 400,000, or less than half of the 1 million units the company expected to sell during the first 12 months of launch, because of the yield of micro-OLEDs that are free of defects.

The Vision Pro headsets represent Apple's first new product category in almost a decade and analysts are monitoring its launch very, very closely, though its high price point of $3,499 — the most for a headset — had already put the product's success into question. With production problems already aplenty, the company has laid dormant plans for a cheaper version of the device for now.

Apple ranked #26 on HackerNoon's Tech Company Rankings this week.

In Other News.. 📰

• Mastodon wins, Twitter loses: Elon Musk's chaotic decisions are only boosting the popularity of Twitter's rivals, including Germany's Mastodon.
• Subscription services at Snap seem to be working. The legacy social media app recently revealed that its subscription service Snapchat+ hit 4 million members. The service, which costs $3.99/month, was launched in June of last year.
• Microsoft and Nvidia were among a slew of investors that funneled about $1.3 billion in Inflection AI, an AI startup founded by Google DeepMind co-founder Mustafa Suleyman and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman.
• Binance is not welcome in Germany.
• U.S. regulators plan to sue Amazon for rewarding online merchants that use its logistics services and punishing those that don't.

And that's a wrap! Don't forget to share this newsletter with your family and friends!

See y'all next week. PEACE! ☮️

— Sheharyar Khan, Editor, Business Tech @ HackerNoon