Apple inched up two places in Fortune’s annual Fortune 500 list of the top U.S. corporations based on gross revenue. Apple’s numbers were good for third place, behind on Walmart and Exxon Mobil. Apple had ranked in 5th place in 2014 and 2015. Rounding out the rest of the top 10 were: Berkshire Hathaway, McKesson, UnitedHealth Group, CVS Health, General Motors, Ford Motors, and AT&T.
Other notable carriers, technology companies, and Apple suppliers on the list include AT&T (10th), Verizon (13th), Amazon.com (18th), HP (20th), Microsoft (25th), IBM (31st), Alphabet (36th), Intel (51st), Cisco Systems (54th), Oracle (77th), Qualcomm (110th), Facebook (157th), and Broadcom (331st).
While Apple rose two places in the list, Fortune’s profile of the Cupertino firm didn’t neglect to mention the company’s recent slowdown in device sales.
After more than a decade of solid growth fueled first by the iPod music player and then by the even more popular iPhone, Apple finally appeared to hit a wall. Still the most profitable publicly-traded company in the world, Apple’s iPhone 6S and 6S Plus upgrades barely outsold their predecessors after arriving on the market at the end of 2015, while sales of the iPad tablet computer continued to shrink throughout the year. In April 2015, the Apple Watch arrived to mixed reviews and modest sales.
Apple’s revenues were just over $233.7 billion during fiscal 2015. That was a 27.9% increase over the previous year. Also of note, while both Walmart and Exxon Mobil posted higher gross revenues than Apple, the iPhone maker’s annual profits of $53.4 billion were more than both companies profits combined.
