Microsoft on Monday briefly passed Apple to become the world’s most valuable publicly traded company, reports Business Insider.
Microsoft on Monday briefly surpassed Apple as the most valuable company in the US, with a market capitalization of about $812 billion. Still, Apple was back on top by the stock market’s close, with a market value of more than $825 billion. The last time Microsoft was more valuable than Apple was in 2010.
It was a somewhat surprising turn of events, as less than two months ago Microsoft’s market value topped out at $887 billion while Apple’s reached a peak above $1.12 trillion. In August, Apple became the first US company with a $1 trillion valuation.
Apple became the world’s only trillion dollar publicly traded company earlier this year. However, it lost that status in November, and has seen its market cap steadily decline since then. The decline began soon after an announcement that Apple would no longer share information about iPhone, iPad, and Mac sales on a unit basis.
Yesterday was the first time Microsoft’s market cap had matched Apple’s since mid-2010. Strong PC sales and a growing cloud business made Microsoft one of the few tech companies to grow in value following its September earnings report.
Apple’s ultimately regained its No. 1 rank, closing at $828.64 billion, while Microsoft stood at $822.90 billion. Shares of Apple rose 1.4%, erasing an earlier decline, while Microsoft climbed 3.3%.