New York: Apple Inc. surpassed ExxonMobil Corp. to seize the title of world's most valuable company as investor confidence in high-tech growth prospects exceeded faith in the oil industry's gushing profits.
While both companies declined Wednesday, Exxon fell more, leaving it with a market value of $330.8 billion, compared with $337.2 billion for Apple at the close of US markets. Wednesday was the first time Apple passed Exxon in intraday trading.
The showdown with Exxon follows Apple's 14-year transformation from a personal-computer also-ran into a seller of everything from smartphones to digital music. Apple has already eclipsed Microsoft Corp., International Business Machines Corp. and Intel Corp, whose dominance of the technology industry in the 1990s helped nudge Apple to the fringes of the PC market.
Apple ripens
"The Apple of today is different from the Apple of even a few years ago," Shaw Wu, an analyst at Sterne Agee and Leach, said in an interview. "People who buy Apple tend to buy big and get friends and family to do it as well. There's nothing else like that."
The shares have climbed 13 per cent this year, fuelled by sales of the iPad and iPhone, and a burgeoning business in China. Apple fell 2.3 per cent to $363.69 (Dh1335.90) on the Nasdaq Stock Market.
Shares of Irving, Texas-based Exxon declined 4.4 per cent to $68.03 on the New York Stock Exchange.
Exxon has tumbled since trading in July at more than $85 a share, as oil futures in New York have dropped. Exxon bought XTO Energy Inc. last year to tap natural-gas shale deposits in North America and is seeking to buy more gas reserves, even as futures remain about $4 per million British thermal units.
"Two things that I would definitely say have hurt Exxon are lower oil prices and its increasing reliance on natural gas," said Philip Weiss, an analyst at Argus Research in New York. Weiss, whose family owns some Exxon shares, rates the company as a "buy".
Apple, meanwhile, is poised to increase computer sales as much as twofold over the next few years, and the iPhone business may triple in size, Wu said.
If successful, the company's new iCloud music and information-storage service, which only works with Apple products, could further lock its customers into buying the company's devices.
Profit surge
Apple's profit more than doubled last quarter to $7.31 billion on revenue of $28.6 billion. The company had record sales of iPhones and iPads — products that didn't exist five years ago — and they now account for about two-thirds of revenue. Apple also has accumulated $76.2 billion in cash and other holdings.
Even so, the company's profits are eclipsed by Exxon's. Analysts estimate that Apple's net income will reach almost $26 billion in the fiscal year ending in September, according to Bloomberg data. That compares with about $42 billion for Exxon in the calendar year 2011. The gulf between the companies' revenue is even larger. Apple's sales will be $108.1 billion this fiscal year, analysts estimate. For Exxon, the projection is $481.6 billion.
Apple chief executive officer Steve Jobs, who co-founded the company at the age of 21, was ousted by the board in 1985. When he returned 12 years later, Apple had run up $1.86 billion in losses over two years. It was 90 days away from bankruptcy, Jobs would later say.
He engineered the company's comeback by honing Apple's industrial design, tightly integrating software with hardware, and pushing into new markets, such as phones, music and tablets.
The iPhone, introduced in 2007, has become Apple's best-selling product and turned the company into the world's biggest smartphone maker.
After winning customers away from Finland's Nokia and BlackBerry maker Research In Motion Ltd., Apple is now sparring with Google Inc. for leadership in the market for mobile-phone software.
The company stoked recent growth with a new version of its Mac computer operating system called OS X Lion, along with updated computers.
ICloud, meanwhile, will let users store, synchronise and access files from different Apple devices.
Apple's shares are up from an adjusted $5.48 on September 16, 1997, the day Jobs retook the reins as head of the company.
