Apple has become the first US company to become worth $2 trillion, a landmark moment in a stock market boom that has made tech companies more valuable than ever in the midst of the coronavirus pandemic.
Shares in the company crosse 467.77 on Wednesday, an all-time high that lifts its market capitalisation above $2 trillion. The milestone comes just two years after Apple became the first publicly traded company to be cross the trillion-dollar threshold. Only last month, its value passed the Saudi oil giant Aramco, which went public last year and briefly hit the $2 trillion mark.
Apple shares have risen by more than 50pc this year alone, fuelled by a boom in digital services as lockdowns send people to online entertainment and communication tools, and as dramatic intervention from central banks has propped up stock markets.
The four other biggest US tech companies – Amazon, Microsoft, Facebook and Google’s parent Alphabet – have all surged to record highs during the crisis. They now make up more than a fifth of the total value of the S&P 500, the collection of blue-chip American stocks, higher than the concentration reached during the dotcom bubble.
Apple shares have surged partly on optimism about the upcoming launch of the new iPhone, expected to be the first featuring 5G technology. Sales of the company’s devices have held up better than expected in the pandemic, while production is largely back on track in its Asian manufacturing hubs. However, Apple admitted last month that the new models will arrive later than their normal release in the first half of September, saying they would be on sale “a few weeks” later than usual.